FREMANTLE coach Ross Lyon says his players shouldn’t “whip themselves” over their 50-point loss to Port Adelaide, but admits he’s frustrated the side couldn’t replicate its promising pre-season form.
Fremantle entered round one full of confidence after beating its cross-town rivals West Coast by 62 points but were brought back to earth by the Power at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night.
“They’ve got some good pace in their team obviously but we just weren’t able to take that part of their game off them, which we were expectant that we would based on a small sample,” Lyon said.
“Our JLT (Community Series), we’d been good at those sort of things, working hard, being hard at the player.
“We came with an expectation to win, compete fiercely. I thought we competed, not exactly how we wanted to, but I thought it was a pretty strong effort.
“We’ll gather ourselves and get going again. We won’t whip ourselves; we know there’s things to work on.”
But the Dockers were down in a few key areas – they had 19 less tackles than Port and were minus 14 in contested ball.
“In the end they got on top around the ball.. if you can’t find them you can’t tackle them,” Lyon said.
“They’ve got some big strong bodies. (Ollie) Wines is a big man, (Tom) Rockliff is a big man, (Travis) Boak, if he gets through there, is a big man, (Sam) Powell-Pepper is a big man, (Brad) Ebert is a big man. We’ve got (David) Mundy and (Nat) Fyfe.”
In a positive for the Dockers, Andrew Brayshaw and Bailey Banfield made their debuts with both players collecting 12 disposals each.
Lyon said he had no problem blooding them on a ground where the Dockers have struggled in previous encounters.
WATCH: Ross Lyon's full post-match media conference
“I don’t think that was a baptism of fire. That’s AFL footy, there’s tough gigs everywhere.
“I think Andrew looked composed with the ball, obviously we’d like more of it.”
There won’t be any wholesale changes after one loss on the road but there’s pressure coming from below with Joel Hamling delivering a strong performance for Peel in the WAFL.
Instead Lyon said the team would look to rebound against the Bombers.
“Optus Stadium in Perth and we are excited about that. Essendon will be full of beans coming over. We need to get back, recover and get moving.”
