The areas of improvement Fremantle coach is focusing on for 2022

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir sees pressure around the ball as an area of improvement for his side in 2022.

The Dockers ranked 17th in the competition for tackles laid last season and while Longmuir says they will largely maintain their game plan, their focus going forward is on pressure and the turnovers it can create.

“A lot of our roles that make up our offence and defence are similar. I think what we’re searching for is to be able to them under pressure consistently,” the Freo coach told Sportsday WA.

“I feel like our stoppage structures and our midfield work is really strong, I feel like our front-half defence is strong.

“We need to lift our pressure and we need to get better with our ball movement.

“It’s been a bit of a slow burn with our ball movement and our inconsistencies with it especially over last year, our front half of the year was much better than our back half of the year.

“There’s always plenty to work on. As far as the roles and the bigger picture structure of the way we want to play has remained pretty similar and will (next) year.

“The way we play, I don’t think we’ll ever be first in tackles laid, but our pressure needs to be a lot better than what it was last year, there were too many missed tackles.

“The more aggressive you are in defence, the more opportunities you create in offence, they work hand in hand. I believe if we pick our pressure up it’ll give us opportunities to go back the other way and score.”

The Dockers used picks eight, 10 and 21 in the 2021 National Draft, grabbing local talents Jye Amiss, Neil Erasmus and Matthew Johnson.

Longmuir says Amiss, a key forward, will be a long-term project, but the two midfielders are already flying on the track.

“It’s early days, but I’m really happy with our draft hand, they’ve been really strong,” he said.

“Our bigger boys are going to take a bit of time as they always do, but they came a little bit underdone and Jye Amiss, our first pick, had a bit of a patella injury at the end of last year and he’s going to be a little bit of a slow burn.

“The two young midfielders we picked up have hit the ground running. The thing that has really stood out is their competitiveness and their want to do everything, they get really frustrated when they get taken out of the training drills because of load management.

“Players that are really competitive and high character are players that will go a long way. We’re really excited about what they can do and I’m not going to put a ceiling on what they can achieve or declare them for Round 1, but I’m really confident that all of our picks will be long term footballers at our club.”

Longmuir and Fremantle agreed to a two-year contract extension earlier in the week.

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