Lachie Neale is predicting a battle of the midfields heading into Saturday’s round one clash with Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on Saturday.
Neale expects an almost full strength Port midfield to come up against the likes of himself, Nat Fyfe and David Mundy.
“Port added Rockliff in the offseason, with young guys like Powell Pepper and Ollie Wines and then Travis Boak, I read that he’s right to go, so they’ve got a lot of depth through the midfield,” Neale said.
“It’s a really good midfield. It’s going to be a tough challenge but I feel like we’ve got the midfield to match it.
“I’m looking forward to going head to head with them, it will be a great battle.”
HAVE YOU GOT YOUR ROUND 3 TICKETS YET? SECURE YOUR SEAT!
While pleased that Freo finished the pre-season on a positive note with a win against West Coast, Neale knows that it counts for nothing heading into a difficult round one away trip.
“I think we can take momentum from (our pre-season),” Neale said.
“We’ve trained really hard to improve our defence and improve our ball movement. We saw that come to life in the first couple of weeks of the JLT Series.
“We can definitely take that away and, hopefully, implement that into round one but Port are in pretty good nick as well.
“It’ll be a different beast to the JLT but we’re confident in the things we’ve worked on, it will help us improve and give us a really good crack to win as many games as possible.”
Neale said Fremantle won’t change their playing style with or without running midfielders Stephen (calf) and Bradley Hill (quad) in the lineup.
“They’re obviously important parts to our team, but whether they play round one or not, it’s not going to change our mentality or the way we play,” Neale said.
“Against West Coast, they both didn’t play and I thought we played a good brand of footy and the way we wanted.
“It’s that next man in mentality and someone will fill that role if they don’t play, but if they do then fantastic.”
