Danielle Laidley: Competitive advantage of Opening Round clear to see in Fremantle Dockers’ loss to Geelong

Fremantle’s loss to Geelong was a game of two halves. So I’ve broken it down into the good bits, the bad bits and the ugly bits after Justin Longmuir’s side gave up a strong lead to be run down by Geelong. The good The first quarter was powerful and dynamic. The Dockers’ best contest and clearance work was on show and the ball movement was terrific. This has been evolving over the past three years. There was speed on the ball, they changed the angles by foot, took ground with forward handballs and used deep entries inside forward 50 to score heavily. Scoring 12 times (8.4) from 16 inside-50s in the first quarter was huge. Geelong kicked five goals to pull back the margin, but in the second quarter Fremantle’s game was still in good order. They led scores from turnover 7.4 to 3.1 at half-time and had 10 inside-50s for seven shots (3.4) in the second term. The way Fremantle played early was as good as we have seen across the competition early days. It wasn’t a win, but this part of their game is in good order. The bad As part of Chris Scott’s quarter-time spray, tweaks were made to Geelong’s game. They closed in the game around stoppages and their uncontested ball numbers went through the roof. But the Dockers’ lead was 22 points at half-time, which a real positive because it’s bloody tough trying to win at the Cattery! Let me set the scene here. I am with JL about the competitive advantage for those teams who play in Opening Round. It’s wrong and there is enough evidence to say so. It’s not an excuse, but a reason as I see it, as to why Fremantle ran out of gas and fatigue set in. The difference between AFL clubs’ conditioning is minuscule, but when everyone is on a level platform at this time of the year real games are king, not training. Does the extra game increase your conditioning by five per cent? Does this equate to the margin of the game? Fremantle’s ball use became slower, they were not clean with the ball and it became a long-down-the-line style, particularly in the last quarter. This fell into Geelong’s hands. They are very good at defending this type of play and the ground is very skinny (115m wide compared to Optus Stadium at 130m wide). Changing of the angles and the quality run had disappeared. The ball movement we saw early in the game is not automatic as yet and under fatigue it falls away. But Fremantle supporters, I can assure you it will happen. The ugly I mentioned last week in my article how cautious I was of Fremantle’s injuries in defence. It came back to bite them on the weekend. Alex Pearce was very underdone, yet still had a presence, until fatigue set in. There was no Brennan Cox or Luke Ryan. It was left to Oscar McDonald, who was honourable early, but completely gassed out. Heath Chapman gave too much room to Jeremy Cameron and Brandon Walker didn’t compete with Patrick Dangerfield in the air when it counted. Suddenly, a strength of the Dockers looked terribly vulnerable at a time when key forwards are kicking bags of goals. Sean Darcy played just 45 per cent game time and still looked fatigued as he won 22 hit-outs. Geelong’s clearance numbers and score from this area were going up. He had no clearances himself and no follow-up work. Now, where does he fit? Particularly with Mason Cox waiting in the wings. Jye Amiss can’t just be a lead and uncontested mark player. There must have been six or seven times he was in the marking contest, but he didn’t hold his ground. Is it leg strength or forward craft? And he had just one tackle. This is not an event, it’s a pattern. Where does he fit in? Could Mason Cox take his spot?