Fremantle Senior Coach Justin Longmuir has said the team’s performance against Melbourne was not up to standard, after losing by 10 points on Saturday afternoon at the MCG.

Speaking at his post-match media conference, Longmuir said multiple facets of the game let the team down.

“(I’m) disappointed with the way we played,” Longmuir said.

“I didn’t think we were tough enough. We didn’t value the right things and didn’t defend our front half the way we wanted to.

“We lost the contested ball, and some of that is method, some of it is just grunt. And to go down in the tackle count as well – we didn’t put enough pressure on them after they won the ball.”

Melbourne’s forward line applied pressure from the outset, out-tackling Fremantle 27–4 inside forward 50 for the day – something Longmuir noted as one of the major disappointments.

It’s the third time this year that Fremantle has lost the tackle count inside 50.

“The disappointing thing for me is that we couldn’t manufacture that pressure at the other end (our forward 50),” Longmuir said.

“They were able to just bounce out of our forward 50 way too easily and get far too much field position. We couldn’t rectify that throughout the day – that’s the disappointing part for me.

“We could have defended a lot better than we did today. It starts at the contest with our pressure, and the way we set up behind the ball just wasn’t up to the usual standard.”

Fremantle defender Luke Ryan echoed his coach’s words, saying the performance was not one the team was proud of.

“That was pretty poor. Our contest was off, our pressure was off – it didn’t look like us at all,” Ryan said post-match.

“Our contest, team defence, and pressure were nowhere near where we wanted them to be. We had no front-half footy.

“We want to be the hunter, not the hunted.”

Ryan said one of the standout positives from an otherwise disappointing afternoon was the return of Oscar McDonald, who played his first AFL game in nearly 400 days after a significant knee injury in his Club debut last year.

“We love O’Mac. It was great to see him kick a goal as well,” Ryan said.

Andrew Brayshaw was one of the team’s standout performers with 33 disposals at 82% disposal efficiency, eight clearances, nine scoring involvements, 17 contested possessions and one goal.

Fremantle now sits at three wins and three losses for the season, with the Club's annual Len Hall Tribute game against the Crows on Friday.

“It’s going to be a massive game, and hopefully a sell-out crowd in front of our fans again – who we haven’t seen in a while,” Ryan said.

“I look forward to it. They are in really good form, so we are going to have to bring our best, that’s for sure.”