FREMANTLE midfielder Garrick Ibbotson says his young side isn't scared of anyone after giving premiership fancy Geelong a mighty fright at Subiaco Oval on Sunday.

After the home side rallied to draw level at the last break, the Cats booted five of the next seven goals, with Fremantle eventually going down by 19 points to record its fifth straight defeat.

Despite the loss, an upbeat Ibbotson said there were plenty of encouraging signs to come from Sunday's display, and the young Fremantle side was looking forward to its next test.  

"Obviously losing isn't great, but Geelong are the best, and in the second half of the season we want to test ourselves against the best and see how we go," Ibbotson told fremantlefc.com.au. 

"We're not really scared of any team. We have belief we can win every game, and today we played well.

"Knowing a team is the best in the competition, I think that can cause teams to be a little bit wary knowing that Geelong are going to hurt them if they turn the ball over.

"But we just wanted to play our own game style and see how we went."

Ibbotson finished with 23 possessions and snapped a brilliant fourth-quarter goal to keep his team in touch.

The 21-year-old praised the side's first-year players, saying it was their best collective game this season.

Matt de Boer and Greg Broughton were the standouts, doing successful defensive jobs on Joel Selwood and Steve Johnson respectively.

"They took it upon themselves today to make sure they played their roles and made sure they contributed to the team, and they did in every way," Ibbotson said.

"Stevie Johnson is playing as good as anyone in the competition at the moment, and Broughton is a young guy. He has a really big will to beat his opponent and he did today.

"Matty de Boer did a great job on Joel Selwood, and Stephen Hill always plays well, Nic Suban as well. 

"Everyone did their job today in the one-on-ones."

Without chief tagger Ryan Crowley, Byron Schammer ran with Gary Ablett and limited the Geelong star to 29 disposals.

Ibbotson and Steven Dodd also spent time on the Brownlow Medal favourite in what was a team approach. 
 
"Just anyone who's around him at the time has got to get into him a little bit or block his run," Ibbotson said of Ablett.

"So it's more than just the one person who is allocated the role – it's a team effort."

Fremantle has been in a winning position in each of its last five losses, and now faces a testing month against top-eight sides Collingwood, Carlton, Adelaide and Brisbane.  

Ibbotson said stopping run-ons such as Geelong's fourth-quarter surge on Sunday was the key to taking the next step and registering a win. 

"We've been close. The only thing is we get a little patch of either a quarter or a little bit just after half time where a team gets a little run-on," he said.
 
"It was the very last bit of today's game where Geelong got away from us a little bit. It's something for us to work on."