Fremantle’s clash with Hawthorn on Sunday at Optus Stadium pitted the round’s youngest and oldest teams against each other and the Hawks’ experience showed in their 59-point victory, according to Michael Walters.
Hawthorn fielded a team that was on average more than three years older than Fremantle, with an average age of 26.71 compared to Fremantle’s 23.54.
Walters said that the lessons from the loss would only help the team’s younger players in the long run.
“Hawthorn are a quality team and they came here to really get the job done,” Walters said.
“They’re fighting for finals this year and fighting for the top eight. They’ve got some experience in that team and I think there were around 12 premiership players in that side.”
While Fremantle’s leaders led the way through Lachie Neale (36 disposals) and David Mundy (34 disposals), Freo had a number of promising performances from their younger ranks.
First-year midfielder Andrew Brayshaw collected a career-high 25 disposals and kicked a goal while rookie draftee Bailey Banfield had 19 touches and six tackles.
“We’re young, we’re going to learn from that,” Walters said.
“There’s no doubt the boys walked off the field with a little bit of knowledge about how to play the game and there’s no better side to learn from.
“We wanted to compete and play a fierce brand of footy but we couldn’t hold that for four quarters.
“They’ve got Tom Mitchell while Shaun Burgoyne is still running around.
“There’s no doubt that our young midfielders in Adam Cerra, Andy Brayshaw and Stefan Giro would have learnt a bit from those guys.”
Walters stressed that Fremantle needs to avoid a similar effort next Sunday against local rivals West Coast, who sit second on the ladder.
“They’re flying at the moment and we just need to make sure we stick together as a group,” Walters said.
“We’ll assess the game against the Hawks and we’ll come back and try to put a four-quarter effort in as we know what sort of team they are.”
