FREMANTLE half-forward Paul Duffield has applauded the efforts of the young players in his team after their 24-point loss to Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium on Saturday night.

The Dockers started the game strongly but faded away after half time, allowing Port to dominate the third quarter and take away the win.

Duffield said that simplifying the match plan to make the game easier for the younger players was a key factor in helping them develop.

“With young players we didn’t want to make things too complicated. We just wanted to simplify things and take it to a one-on-one game to see if we could close down some of their ball users and give ourselves a chance,” he said after the game.

“I thought the young players that we brought in accounted themselves really well tonight”.
 
Duffield was influential in the game with 29 disposals and four clearances, and said that although Fremantle gave its best effort, they just weren’t good enough on the night.

“A couple of their classier players caught us out at times ... other than that, we tried pretty hard but probably just weren’t good enough.”

Duffield said that Port Adelaide’s usual game style, which involves a lot of short kicks and looking for the lead-up forward, was inhibited by the damp and slippery conditions.

However, the Power still had a dominant third quarter in which they kicked six goals to Fremantle’s two to establish a match-winning lead.

“They just got a little break on, and they were good enough to shut us down when we went forward. It really became a battle between the arcs at times,” he said.

“When we were rebounding, we were rebounding from quite deep in defence so there’s a few things we need to work on for after the bye.”

After their bye next week due to the split round, Fremantle take on Geelong at Subiaco, a game which Duffield says Fremantle will approach with the same aim – developing the younger players.

“I guess we don’t really have much to lose right now, and as you can see we’re in developing phase right now… It’ll probably be the same sort of thing [against Geelong], keeping it simple and giving it our best shot, and see how we go,” he said.

“If we play really well, we might give ourselves a chance.”