Senior coach Justin Longmuir expects Fremantle to blood a number of debutants later this season but insisted it was important not to rush the development of the Club’s young players.

2020 draftees Nathan O’Driscoll, Joel Western and Brandon Walker are yet to join Heath Chapman and Josh Treacy as debutants this season, while Luke Valente and Leno Thomas are also pushing for selection.

The group of five combine for 36 WAFL games of experience - an average of seven WAFL games per player - and Longmuir stressed that not every player is capable of making the jump straight from colts football to the AFL.

“We just want to make sure we set them up to succeed,” Longmuir said.

“I can’t give you a time when those players will get their opportunity but we have to understand that a lot of the players that we drafted in, had never played league footy before.

“They’re at the really early stages of their WAFL career. A lot of them (have only) played five or six WAFL games in their careers so we have to be careful to not push them too quickly.

“We want our players to come in and have an impact (instead of) not being up to standard.

“That’s different for each individual and we’ll work through that. We want to give all our players an opportunity but they need to earn it as well.”

Fremantle were one of three AFL clubs who did not draft a player at Wednesday's NAB AFL mid-season draft.

Longmuir said the players Freo were targeting were not available by their first pick, which would have been at no.8.

“We identified some players we would take and did a fair bit of homework on and realised those players would be taken before we had picks. That’s the main reason we didn’t nominate,” Longmuir said.

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