Both Fremantle captain Alex Pearce and Senior Coach Justin Longmuir believe the gains the group made in 2022 matter for little if they can’t get the fundamentals right in the contest.
Freo faltered against a hungrier Adelaide on Saturday at Adelaide Oval, falling by 39-points despite winning the clearances by nine and having the same number of inside 50s.
Pearce said all of Fremantle’s hard work on their game plan goes out the window when the basics can’t be executed.
“I think our basics all day were really poor,” Pearce said in an interview with 6PR.
“It makes it really hard (to) execute the game plan, we get in a good spot and we miss the kick, miss the handball or drop a mark.
“It’s a really hard one but I think getting our basics right will go a long way for us, it’s something we need to really improve on.”
Ex-teammate David Mundy highlighted in the interview that Adelaide scored four consecutive goals from moving their ball from the defensive 50.
Pearce said it meant Fremantle needed to be more reactive with their team defence.
“We asked an honest question of ourselves in the room around why it looks different from last year, considering a lot of the personnel are the same,” Pearce said.
“Adelaide moved the ball quick from their back half, which is what a lot of teams have tried to do this year, it means that as a whole unit, we need to be reacting really fast off turnovers to make sure we’re in good spots before they take possession of the ball.
“We feel in general we’re slow to react and we’re not getting proactive.
“We spoke about how we can change that and it’s not ‘click your fingers and everything is going to turn around’ but we need to find that energy that we played with last year where we’re all connecting, we’re all on the same page, we’re all playing with a real freedom.”
In his post-match media conference, Longmuir said it was crucial Fremantle did not expect improvement to come naturally after making finals in 2022.
“We need to forget last year, forget what’s happened in the past and live in the moment a little bit more, and worry about what we’re doing now,” Longmuir said.
“We need to get back to the basics of footy, and we got shown up in that area today and unless we get that right, we can’t worry about big picture.
“Once an opposition gets on top of us, we’re going insular, and that’s the responsibility of everyone.
“Everyone needs to show courage in those moments to get outside of themselves and connect with their teammates and stop the rot.”
Justin Longmuir post-match Q&A v Adelaide
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