Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir says do-or-die win over Western Bulldogs good preparation for finals | USAEMALL.com

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir believes the pressure on the Dockers heading into their first final in three years may actually be less than their do-or-die victory over Western Bulldogs last weekend.

And if pressure makes diamonds, Longmuir is confident Fremantle’s “adaptable” football that has been forged in the fires of several big games this season can hold up when September action begins.

After their winner-takes-all, pseudo elimination final against the Bulldogs, the Dockers have the week off to rest weary bodies and prepare for an actual elimination final against either Gold Coast or Hawthorn.

Longmuir is not worried by the identity of their opponent, to be determined after the Suns’ Wednesday night clash with Essendon.

But when it comes to handling the cauldron-like atmosphere of finals, the Fremantle coach believes his team’s infal-round win over the Bulldogs, has already been steeled for the occasion.

“I don’t think the final will be built up as much as that game. In some sense, the pressure will be less,” Longmuir said.

“I’m really proud of the way the players were able to stick to process, and by process I mean controlling the things we can control, and that’s really what you need to do week-in, week-out.

“There’s been weeks where all clubs haven’t quite got that right, and we’ve had a couple of weeks we would love back in terms of the product we’ve put out on weekends, but we were able to reset and focus on us a fair bit last week.”

Whoever the Dockers face in their first final since 2022, Longmuir is confident their best football can stand the test.

“What we’ve been able to do is build a style of footy that is able to be adaptive to opposition we play against (and) game situation,” he said.

“We’ve lost clearances at times this year, but we’ve been able to rely on our ball movement. We’ve won clearance and been able to lock the ball in and play a front half game.

“Defence has, and in particular our backline, been strong all year and been able to hold up under pressure at times, especially against the better sides, as we saw on the weekend.

“We’re building a style of footy that is flexible and adaptable to different weeks, different games, different quarters, in some sense. The maturity of the group and a bit more flexibility in the team has added to that.”

But Longmuir said it was less a case of being able to change gears, and more so having the flexibility to adapt to what their opponents were throwing at them.

“It’s just different ways of playing and opposition, week-in, week-out and quarter-in and quarter-out, offer you different opportunities and different challenges, and we’ve been able to adapt well in game to those things,” he said.

“The flexibility in our team with personnel, which we’ve tried to work on over pre-season and throughout the year, has helped some of that. It’s definitely helped, but it’s probably not necessarily gears; it’s all the flexibility.”

Fremantle kicked seven unanswered goals in the second quarter against the Bulldogs where they looked unstoppable as they charmed, sliced and dazzled their fellow finals contenders, moving the ball at breakneck speed to leave their opponents trailing in their wake.

“Clearly, there were some things we needed to stop with their game, but it was largely based around us and this brand that we want to put out there and I was very proud of the players to be able to control what we could control,” Longmuir said.

“Against the good sides, the free-flying ball movement doesn’t come into it as much, and it becomes about the contest a lot more, and we feel when we’ve been able to bring teams into a contest and make it more of a contested game, we’ve been able to thrive.

“That and the way we’ve defended teams has really stood up against the better sides.

“Everyone wants to talk about ball movement and any scores we had from our back half on the weekend, but if you look at how a lot of those chains started, they start off the back of turning the ball over in good areas, end of contest.

“You get that right, your ball movement sometimes looks after itself.”