Coach claims players lacked the toughness needed following heavy defeat to Geelong

Fremantle’s head coach, Justin Longmuir, has expressed his dissatisfaction with his players, accusing them of lacking toughness in their recent heavy defeat to Geelong.

In Saturday’s contest at GMHBA Stadium, the Cats secured a commanding victory, registering 23.9 (147) to 10.9 (69), marking a brutal start to the season for the Dockers.

A brief resurgence in the third quarter was quickly quelled as Geelong dominated the final quarter of the match.

Despite the absences of key players like Shai Bolton, Sean Darcy, and Hayden Young, Longmuir was not interested in making excuses.

“We had ample experience on the field. We had enough players available,” Longmuir stated to the media following the match.

“I want more than just one round to form an opinion on that. My focus isn’t there at the moment. The team we fielded today is capable of so much more,” he added.

“I take responsibility. Clearly, I didn’t prepare them adequately.

“We’ll analyse every facet of our preparations this week, and I’ll assess my performance. We need to deliver an improved showing in our next match. I’m confident this team has the ability to perform far better than they did today.”

Longmuir characterised the performance as “clearly unacceptable.”

“There’s a lot to process here. I felt that, after the initial five minutes, we lacked the toughness required,” he remarked.

“Their intensity and pressure exceeded what we were prepared for, and we struggled to reciprocate. It was genuinely disappointing.

“We’ll need to conduct a thorough review. Their level of pressure was something we weren’t accustomed to and weren’t equipped to tackle. We discussed this in detail before the game – that you must ramp up your performance for round one. We simply weren’t ready for that.

“We were on the back foot for the entirety of the match due to this. There’s considerable work ahead of us.”

Jeremy Cameron scored four goals for the Cats, while Ollie Henry contributed three.