Sometimes I read a press release from a bank, a politician or a football club and I get to the end of it and think – I have no idea what I just read. Is this good news or bad? Are you sacking someone here or are you appointing them? Am I being sold something? Have you assembled every cook in the kitchen to suck the marrow and meaning out of every sentence?
“Following a number of discussions with Justin Longmuir,” the Fremantle chief executive, Simon Garlick, said in a statement, “it was clear that the expectations we set ourselves is what drives our ambitions and standards, not the length of a contract”.
Hang on, are the Dockers giving their coach the flick here? I’d better keep reading.
“The pressure for the club to perform is always there, and leadership accountability will continue to come from regular performance evaluations and reviews that are central to our success.”
OK, is this some sort of “we’ll back you in for now, but if you don’t make a preliminary final you’re out the door” type arrangement? Perhaps Longmuir could illuminate for us?
“I believe the variation better reflects the mechanisms that should be in place for coaches to ensure we have an adequate layer of protection and security for ourselves and our families, and we get on with the job,” Longmuir said.
He continued, saying he “was ready to embrace the standards that can deliver the period of contention and success …” You get the idea. I blame the Harvard University leadership courses the clubs send their people on. They come back speaking like management consultants.
Press releases aside, the Dockers are probably the most interesting team in the competition this year. They are the hardest to get a proper read on. They had some great wins in 2024. They beat Sydney at the SCG and Brisbane earlier in the year. At times in the Melbourne game in Perth, the speed and precision of their ball movement was the best in the league.
But there were about half a dozen nightmares that cost them – some rough luck, some bad officiating, too many injuries, the final stoppage against Essendon, the fingernail against Carlton, the indignity of dropping a Derby.
The acquisition of Shai Bolton changes the dynamic. They already have a lot of diligent, high-possession players. But there’s no one who gets the pulse racing. Bolton will be the one who can break lines, to zig when everyone else zags, to throw some unpredictability, even irresponsibility, into what is a pretty short-back-and-sides team. He whirrs, jags and slices. He’s so light on his feet. He runs on his toes and springs to his feet like a cat. The Dockers just have to figure out how to properly utilise him.
A lot of that falls on Longmuir, who has already been criticised for describing his team as “vanilla” after the Indigenous All Stars game. In his defence, any team coming up against 22 of the best Indigenous footballers in the country is going to look vanilla. They were probably the quickest team ever assembled. The game meant everything to them, and it was just a cobweb blower for Fremantle.
Let’s not tiptoe around it. The media are always going to go harder at coaches like Longmuir. He was nervous and stuttering at his first press conference. He was the antithesis of the man he replaced. He’s no alpha male. One leading commentator last year said he “lacked presence”. What the hell does that mean? Ulysses Grant lacked presence and he won a civil war. When Alastair Clarkson arrived at Hawthorn, the players thought he was an errand boy. Jonathan Brown has presence. Matthew Pavlich has presence. The mascot wielding an inflatable anchor has presence. It doesn’t mean any of them can coach. Just because Longmuir is quietly spoken doesn’t mean he can’t coach.
But Longmuir has to get something out of this team in 2025. He’s been Fremantle coach since 2020. He’s won just over half the games he’s coached, including one final. His side reminds me of Chris Scott’s Geelong teams from about 2012 to 2019 – creeping and cautious, defensively sound but tardy by foot, certainly not a team you’d cancel all plans to watch.
It’s a condition, being a Fremantle fan. One of my favourite Australian newspaper writers, Martin McKenzie-Murray, writes beautifully about them. “In supporting Freo I’ve come to wallow – luxuriate, even – in our seemingly endless mediocrity,” he wrote several years ago. “Rather than something to be fought, or something that might cause pain, my self-pity has magically cast Freo’s history into a kind of sad, private martyrdom.”
People used to write about Richmond like that, before the joke finally wore off. Like the Tigers, the great thing about Dockers fans is there is no bullshit to them. They are loud, loyal and occasionally loco. This is their fourth decade in the AFL and they’re still waiting for a premiership. They deserve some success. With their current list, they expect it. But vanilla – whether it’s the club describing the coach’s current employment status or the players moving the ball from one end of the ground to the other – isn’t going to get them anywhere in 2025.
