Fremantle’s first to fourth year players made their return for pre-season training on Monday with the aim to get as much of a head start as they can on their senior teammates, according to Andrew Brayshaw.

Ahead of the morning’s training session, new senior coach Justin Longmuir told the group they would not be waiting to get stuck into their preparations for 2020.

The five-plus year players are set to return in a fortnight on Monday 18 November.

“Justin touched on it in our group meeting this morning, we really don’t want to wait for the senior boys to get back to do much, we want them to be chasing us when they come,” Brayshaw said. 

“We’re going to dig in for the next two weeks before they come and work really hard. 

“There’s a lot of game plan we’ll be going over as well with the new coach and we want the senior boys to be chasing us.” 

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After nine wins for Fremantle in 2019, Brayshaw expects any improvement to come from Freo’s younger core.

“I think there’s 22 of us that are back at training already and that’s where the majority of growth is going to come from for our team to move forward,” Brayshaw said.

“We’ve got blokes like Fyfey (Nat Fyfe), Dave (David Mundy) and Sonny (Michael Walters) but it’s us young guys who have to step up and bring the team up as well.” 

While Monday’s session was only officially for the first to fourth year players, a number of senior players took part in at least some of the session, including Rory Lobb, Joel Hamling, Michael Walters and Stephen Hill.

“It’s great, obviously they’re not required to be there but they come out and show their faces and it really helps the other boys,” Brayshaw said.

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