Senior Coach Justin Longmuir is expecting across the board improvement from the playing group through the upcoming summer as Fremantle looks to bounce back from a disappointing year.
After finishing fifth in 2022, Fremantle slumped to 14th with 10 wins from 23 games in 2023.
Speaking at Tuesday’s Doig Medal presentation dinner, Longmuir said the season wouldn’t be wasted if the group maximised their potential over the pre-season.
“What we can’t do is make it a wasted year,” Longmuir said.
“I stand here tonight actually more confident than what I was this time last year. I said that to the players at the end of the year.
“We need to get bigger, stronger and fitter. I’ve got high hopes for this group to become one of the fittest teams in the comp.
“I think (High Performance Manager) Phil Merriman and his team have done a great job in building the fitness of our list, but I still think we’ve got some improvement left in us.
“We’ve got some unbelievable athletes within our group, and I think we can really challenge and go to another level and lift the ceiling on their fitness levels.”
Longmuir said the players’ execution would also remain a focus.
“A big part of our pre-season is going to be based around executing, not only roles and game plan, but making sure we get bang for buck out of our ball movement,” Longmuir said.
“I think there’s been a lot of talk and criticism of our ball movement, that’s largely based on the fact that we haven’t been able to finish our work off forward of centre enough.
“We need to go to school on that.”
Longmuir said Fremantle’s inconsistent level of performance came down to not delivering each week in the contest.
“Clearly we need to improve our consistency,” Longmuir said.
“There were periods of the season where our footy really stood up and was really impressive, but there were times where it just didn’t and we let ourselves down.
“Having done the reviews with the coaches, that starts with the contest and our clearance work.
“We’re going to work on that through the pre-season and make sure we’re putting our best foot forward each week.”
