FREMANTLE finally touched down in Sydney on Friday afternoon and confidently stated its preparations for Saturday's qualifying final against the Sydney Swans remain right on track.
The Dockers were left waiting for two hours on the tarmac at Perth Airport on Thursday night before their flight was cancelled due to a technical issue with the plane.
The team was unable to do a planned walk through of ANZ Stadium and its maligned surface on Friday morning, but otherwise assistant coach Chris Bond said preparations had barely been affected.
"(We) don't worry about it at all," Bond said of the cancelled flight and disrupted preparations.
"Our players have been able to travel really well, we've done it over a long period of time, they're every well prepared.
"As soon as the news came through yesterday, the guys went into a mode of just being prepared for the game and we've got no issue with it.
"There's a lot of preparation that they do, but they know what to do, we did our training run yesterday, so today is just about recovery and preparing for the game.
"Obviously we'll have our meetings at about the same time, that isn’t really affected at all, then over to the sports science guys to make sure we're up and going.
"There won't be anything dramatically different."
Preview: Sydney Swans v Fremantle
The players were able to quickly disembark from their flight and were swiftly ushered into a waiting coach to take them out to their hotel, which is situated a short distance from ANZ Stadium.
Bond said the playing group is aware of the difficult task in front of it taking on the minor premiers and flag favourites, but he feels the squad is battle-tested for finals and ready to take on the Swans.
"We're a mature group," he said.
"We've been doing this for a while. We've been lucky enough to play finals in four out of the last five years.
"We know what to do.
"We understand what the task is, we're playing the best team in the competition on their home ground.
"We understand how tough it's going to be, we've got an enormous amount of respect for them, but we won't have any excuses tomorrow."
