Fremantle’s AFLW senior coach Trent Cooper is encouraging his coaching staff to be ‘braver’ in season six, as Freo look to improve on their 2021 season.

Cooper said that Fremantle had plateaued at times after a stellar 2020 where his side remained undefeated until the season was called off due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

 “We didn’t make enough brave decisions, the way we trained we didn’t really challenge the girls enough,” Cooper told SportFM.

“Our motto is to ‘keep aiming for improvement’ and we probably didn’t do that last year coming off the undefeated season in 2020.

“We sort of kept things the same and that’s what we ended up with, we produced similar sort of footy, and other sides went past us.

“It’s a long time between AFLW seasons because you only play nine or ten games so it’s a long time to reflect.”

Cooper said some changes to training sessions had already been implemented this pre-season, with a focus on providing greater challenges to his players on the training track.

“In a game of AFLW, the disposal efficiency rate goes at around about 56 per cent and we were probably training at around 80 per cent where the drills all looked nice and flowed beautifully,” Cooper said.

“However, we weren’t really challenging ourselves and making the drills messy enough to be able to respond in games when that did happen to us.

“This year we are messing it up a lot and making the players think through a lot of different challenges and constraints and to their credit they have really taken that onboard and they are applying themselves really well,

“Hopefully, we see the benefits of that when we start playing in January.”

Fremantle are tracking well on the injury front, with Cooper saying only a few minor niggles are present amongst the group.

“We’ve got just a few minor injuries and touch wood everyone at this stage can be available for round one,” Cooper said.

“We’re hoping that trend continues because we have had a few people ruled out before round one before each of my first three season.

“So far, the squad is looking fit and ready to go.”