FREMANTLE coach Mark Harvey was delighted with his side's last three quarters in Sunday's defeat of Melbourne and has ruled out further retirements this week among his experienced players.

Reports on Sunday suggested 32-year-old veteran Shaun McManus would be announcing his retirement on Monday and would play his last game in the round 20 Western Derby against the Eagles, but Harvey focused on the win and refused to confirm the rumours.

"No it wasn’t (McManus' last game). He knows that the time is getting closer and it's been one of the rare occasions to celebrate this year, so he's enjoying every moment," Harvey said.

"He was really important for us when he came on into the forward line. He kept the pressure on in there and showed some really good things considering he hasn’t played for six or seven weeks."

Melbourne kicked six unanswered goals to the five-minute mark of the second term, which Harvey admitted was hardly ideal, but he wasn’t totally surprised given the structural changes he made to keep players fresh.

"Playing at home you don’t want to find yourselves five goals down in the first quarter so we were on the back foot from the start, but it's good to see that we showed initiative to get ourselves out of that situation," he said.

"I made four or five structural changes to the side, a la (Luke) McPharlin playing forward, (Ryan) Crowley back, (Scott) Thornton to a wing, and that might have made us feel a bit uneasy when things weren’t going our way.

"Sometimes when you go through a season like this you need to give the players a break from the regular things that they do for the team, but it was also to find out about the evolving midfield that we need to get together."

The only injury from the game was Brock O'Brien's hamstring, but two players not in the side against Melbourne, Rhys Palmer and Des Headland, could be at the opposite ends of injury problems.

Harvey revealed for the first time that Palmer has cartilage damage to his knee, while Headland will line up in the WAFL next Saturday for the first time since his knee injury.

"We've got to weigh up with what we do with Rhys. I will put it on the table and I hope you appreciate that, he has a knee problem. There's a possibility he won't play again this year, but we will see how he trains this week," he said.

"Des was close this week, but I'm pretty sure he will play for Subiaco next week. He will play a role there and we will see how quickly he can come up."