Fremantle senior coach Justin Longmuir believes Bolton’s best is still yet to come, as the electrifying forward builds into his career with Fremantle just four games in.
After not kicking a goal in his first two appearances in purple, Bolton has looked more and more at home with consecutive two-goal performances.
“He’s just so dangerous,” Longmuir said at his post-match media conference.
“He probably didn’t make the most of his opportunities, but he’s a dangerous forward for us.
"He just creates every time he gets it, and we’ll find him more as the guys work out how he plays, and he works out how we play. We’ll keep finding him more.
"He’s not far away from having a big game, it feels.”
Bolton kicked both of his goals in the second half of the 61-point win over the Tigers, when Freo hit their stride to kick 12 of the last 13 goals of the game.
At half-time, Fremantle had just a +2 advantage in clearances and contested possessions, but by the final siren they had accelerated their game to dominate territory (inside 50 entries 65–36) by winning clearances (44–33) and generating forward-half intercepts (27–11).
Fremantle’s better ball movement resulted in a major advantage in points scored from turnovers (70–20), while also applying strong tackle pressure to defend the front half of the ground, something that pleased Longmuir.
Fremantle had a 16–7 advantage in tackles inside forward 50 and dominated the airways, taking 17–4 marks inside the forward 50.
“I thought the second half was really professional and disciplined, and more like the way we want to play consistently,” Longmuir said.
“I thought we were inconsistent in the contest in the first half. Then, led by our leaders we were much more consistent in the contest in the second half.
"I thought with 50/50 balls, we put our name on it. We owned the footy, which gave us territory, and then we defended our front half better than we did in the first half.
"We were able to score off the back of those two things instead of just relying on ball movement.
"Us getting better supply into the forward line, sometimes we don’t kick a score, and everyone wants to question the forward line function and what we’re doing in our front half, but quite often it’s off the back of not getting the right supply or helping the forwards up the ground.”
Fremantle’s win at Barossa Park marks the 25th venue the Club has played at, second only to Brisbane among AFL clubs for most venues played at.
Fremantle have also played under the AFL’s heat policy in all five of their opening games for the 2025 Toyota AFL Premiership season.
