OF ALL the words at Justin Longmuir's disposal in a mid-February media conference to describe a Fremantle performance in an exhibition match against the Indigenous All-Stars, 'vanilla' would have been among the most problematic half-dozen.
But somehow, out it came.
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"We played pretty vanilla" and "we tried to keep it pretty vanilla," were his go-to phrases, explaining that there was no point in exposing to opposition teams the intended Dockers 2025-season game style.
In isolation, and given it was uttered after a match with nothing at stake, a coach using the vanilla word wouldn't have resonated beyond the moment it was stated. That it came after multiple seasons of below-expectation Dockers outcomes, after incessant outside-club assessments of a boring and laborious coaching method, and after four straight losses to close and ultimately ruin their 2024 campaign, meant that it had the effect of becoming the defining word of a coach entering a career-defining season.
And maybe we would never have referred to the vanilla word again, had the Dockers not embarrassed themselves in Geelong in round one, and also had they not, in typical vanilla style, kicked just five goals at home after quarter-time last Sunday in a loss to the beleaguered Sydney Swans.
But here we are, with all of that happening, five days out from the most pressurised match of Longmuir's six seasons as coach – a Derby against West Coast at Optus Stadium.
The Dockers should win this match, easily. But even if they do, and this is how precariously placed the coach finds himself just two matches into the 2025 season, it unfortunately for him won't change the outside view of him – that he is too conservative with a list that effectively wants for nothing.
The Dockers have a gun backline with captain Alex Pearce and Luke Ryan. In the midfield, there are All-Australians Caleb Serong and Andrew Brayshaw, and they play in the middle with dynamic ruck Luke Jackson. In attack, there are a couple of brilliant marking forwards in Josh Treacy and Jye Amiss. And they also boast the shiniest recruit of last season, the magical, line-breaking Shai Bolton. Fellow gun players Hayden Young and Sean Darcy are missing with injury in the early part of the season.
Longmuir has coached the Dockers in 109 matches, for 53 wins. An elimination final win in 2022 was a high point, coming on the back of arguably the most exciting football played under his watch as a seven-goal deficit against Western Bulldogs was comfortably retrieved.
Too often, though, since 2020, it has been a careful, boring, structured Fremantle in operation. For all the talent, there is little dare, and seemingly very sparing licence given to players who would like to embrace an attacking style.
The vanilla actions stretch off field, too. I'm still trying to decipher what CEO Simon Garlick was trying to say in late February when he announced a "variation" of the coach's "employment terms", where he would "transition to an ongoing employment agreement".
"Following a number of discussions with Justin, it was clear that those expectations we set ourselves is what drives our ambitions and standards, not the length of a contract," Garlick said in a club-issued media release.
My translation: Longmuir needs to take the Dockers to at least the second week of the 2025 finals series to be guaranteed rolling status as coach. And Garlick's connection to the out-of-contract Luke Beveridge (he was CEO at the Bulldogs at the time of Beveridge's appointment in late 2014) is a very intriguing backdrop to 2025 proceedings.
Those who best know Longmuir swear by his character, his disciplines and upfront ways. They laud a man they describe as fiercely fair and confrontational when he needs to be. They speak of a person very different to the regularly unsure one who talks into media microphones and at cameras, and also of one who will never stop attempting to better himself and those under his care.
But all of that will only carry him so far if he doesn't seek to inject some dare into his ultra-organised gameplan.
If the Dockers are to make a success of 2025, they are going to need to introduce multiple measures to combat the vanilla mindset. The biggest doubt is whether the coach is capable of that.
