Fremantle coach’s ‘vanilla’ admission rocks AFL Indigenous All Stars

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir has casually dropped an eyebrow-raising admission about his team’s fake performance in Saturday’s All Star game.

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir says a “pretty vanilla” version of the Dockers was on display against the Indigenous All-Stars on Saturday — and it was intentional.

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With Bobby Hill kicking four goals and Jason Horne-Francis adding three, the All-Stars looked much more dangerous in attack in their 43-point win over Fremantle. They had almost 80 more possessions, 30 more marks and 15 extra inside 50 entries, while they also had 11 goalkickerss to Fremantle’s four in the 16.12 (108) to 9.11 (65) win.

Longmuir post-game didn’t seem too fazed though, admitting he didn’t give much away to scouts from other clubs watching the game.

“We tried to focus on us, understanding that (there was) a bit (of) unexpected about where their players were going to line up and how they were going to play and the lack of structure and opportunity to scout the opposition,” he told reporters.

“Then we played pretty vanilla ... It’s interesting, because all the other teams are getting the vision and will be able to watch it from behind the goals. So, we tried to keep it pretty vanilla. We’ll work on bits and pieces next week and we’ve got match sim and the vision is not released.”

Josh Treacy of the Dockers separates Liam Reidy and Jy Simpkin of the All Stars. Picture: Paul Kane/Getty Images

Asked if he “deliberately kept a lot up your sleeve”, Longmuir said: “This time of the year, trying to just make sure we get the basics right and we didn’t want to expose some of the things we’ve been working on.

“I know when we do our match sim, 18 on 18, no one gets the vision, so we’ve been working on a few things in that space.

“Not going to give too many teams to look at today.”

Longmuir noticed that there was a lot more fatigue from his players, but that a lot of that was planned.

They are still a month out from their first regular season hit-out, against Geelong in Round 1, on 15 March.

He thought the All-Stars players looked fresher, but believed counterpart Xavier Clarke’s use of rotations would have helped with that. Plus, Sean Darcy, Luke Ryan, Nat Fyfe, James Aish, Alex Pearce and Hayden Young were among the Dockers missing, while Sam Switkowski only played one quarter before being sidelined with a suspected concussion.

Also, Michael Walters and Shai Bolton each played for the All-Stars.

“It was always just going to be a marker for where we’re at with our game,” he said.

“We’ve been playing intra clubs, and we’ve been splitting our teams up to even sides most of the pre-season.

“It was the first time we had our better side together for the pre-season as well; it’s a bit earlier for us than when we’d usually do that and play against another team.

“We didn’t defend the ground the way we would’ve liked. Playing against a side with that much skill and run and speed, we got exposed when we didn’t get it done in the contest. And we didn’t stick our tackles.”

— NCA NewsWire

Originally published as Fremantle coach’s ‘vanilla’ admission rocks AFL Indigenous All Stars