ANOTHER week brought another retirement at Fremantle, but coach Mark Harvey is confident of getting a fourth straight win in Sydney on Saturday night.

On Wednesday, Heath Black joined Matthew Carr, Peter Bell and Shaun McManus as 2008 Fremantle retirees. Harvey said he has rarely experienced this many veterans moving on during one season, but is hopeful young players can now more quickly step up as leaders.

"It is a lot of retirements and I can't remember if I've ever been involved in a season like this, particularly before the season is over. It is unusual, but the group has to pull together and cover those retirements in the short term and we move on from there," Harvey said.

"The fact that we had a fairly old list meant that it was always going to happen at some stage. It probably happened earlier than we expected though.

"It affects the younger players because they have to fill the void and will miss that experience around them. What we hope to see is players continue to evolve in this situation as they have over the last couple of weeks."

Harvey's side continues to get more youthful each week but, after three straight wins over Melbourne, Port Adelaide and West Coast, confidence is growing at Fremantle. With a focus on play around the stoppages ahead of taking on the Sydney Swans at the SCG, Harvey is confident of a good showing.

"I just don’t know exactly who will be playing at this stage for them. They've had some good players out that might come back this week, I'm just waiting to hear from our spy," he said.

"They haven’t been at their peak so that provides an opportunity for us. We have some momentum and belief of what we are doing at the moment, so hopefully that carries over. We are playing at the SCG where we don’t have a good record, so it's all about us turning those sorts of things around.

"A lot of our training emphasis this week is on stoppage work and we are prepared to have 90 of them in the game and with big numbers around them. Hopefully we are able to exploit that situation."