Captain Matthew Pavlich was held goalless in Fremantle’s important 11-point win, while crucial midfielder David Mundy had five possessions in the second half as Melbourne staged a gutsy comeback.
Ruckman Aaron Sandilands, who still finished with 34 hit-outs, was also not his dominant self around the ground against Mark Jamar, but Harvey said it was not his star trio that he was worried about.
“It’s how you manage your players, because they appear to be off their feet a little bit, particularly the guys who have played the majority of the year,” Harvey said after the match.
“I think those guys (Pavlich, Mundy and Sandilands), they’re mature enough to keep going. I was more making comment about some other guys that we’ve got in our side, not necessarily those guys.
“There are guys who have carried a significant load for the team, but we’re trying to manage that throughout the course of the week.
“If we can do that as a team when those guys are probably not at their peak we’ll take it.”
Fremantle travels to Etihad Stadium next week to face the Western Bulldogs in a battle for fourth spot, but Harvey said it would not be a season-defining match.
The coach said he expected first-choice key defenders Chris Tarrant and Antoni Grover to be available to join teammates Luke McPharlin and Greg Broughton in a full-strength defence.
“They [the Bulldogs] are coming back from Darwin, they’ve probably got 24-18 hours more than us to recover. It all holds for a good game and an interesting outcome,” Harvey said.
Fremantle conceded seven goals to two in the second half on Sunday, including six unanswered goals in a 16-minute period to start the third term.
Harvey said his side would not get away with such a lapse against the competition’s leading sides.
“We need to make sure that once we’re on top of an opposition we take our chances a lot better than we did today,” he said.
“Even though we were up by a significant margin, we should have been up by more.
“It’s disturbing that you can let an opposition have that much of an effect in a quarter, and that’s something we need to address because we won’t get away with that with sides that are dominating the competition at the moment.”
