FREMANTLE skipper David Mundy insists morale is still strong amongst the Dockers playing group despite a ninth-straight loss to start the season.
The Dockers fall from grace has been spectacular. Richmond inflicted their ninth-straight defeat on Saturday night by 38 points.
Just 12 months ago it was the Tigers who broke the Dockers' equal club record nine-straight winning streak at the same venue. The Dockers ended up winning the minor premiership on that back of that incredible winning run.
Mundy said the morale within the group had not dropped off on the training track and in the lead-up to games despite the horror start to the year.
"The group so far has been pretty good," Mundy told AFL.com.au after the loss to Richmond.
"The front of focus is to keep that morale up and keep that enthusiasm to improve and take our learnings and try and turn this around.
"We're desperate to win. We're desperate to improve. We're working really hard to do that. It's our consistency of effort and application that's really hurting us at the moment."
Mundy believes there were some positives to be taken from the poor start to the year. The savage injury toll that the Dockers have suffered so far in 2016 was compounded by the news that young defender Alex Pearce had broken his leg in the loss to the Tigers.
But the loss of senior players to injury earlier in the season has presented opportunities to youngsters like Lachie Weller, Connor Blakely and Ed Langdon.
Mundy said their development had been a positive.
"If you look (from) the glass half full (perspective) it's the coming on of those guys like Ed and Lachie Weller and Alex Pearce," Mundy said.
"The growth in those guys has been fantastic. They're obviously going to make a few errors every now and then.
"Speaking of Connor, his application to task is absolutely first class. He's as hard as a cat's head. He's not going to take a backward step. He's really scrapping away, fighting hard." Blakely, 20, had 22 touches and six tackles against the Tigers in just his fifth AFL game.
