My wife has this regular prank she plays on me when we get into the car. After casually plonking herself down on the passenger seat, she pretends to fiddle with the radio while I start the car.
Unbeknownst to me, she’s cranking my seatwarmer up to the max. About 15 minutes into the drive I’ll start to sweat, look down at the buttons and see the same orange light glaring back at me.
Usually, I’ll chuckle, call her a joker, and we’ll be on our merry way.
Turns out Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir has found himself in a hot seat of his own… but unlike my scenic Sunday drives, I don’t think he’s doing too much “chuckling” right now. And I certainly don’t think he and his team are “on their merry way”.
The Dockers were absolutely throttled by Geelong at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday, a result that has heaped serious pressure on the coach heading into his sixth season at the helm.
Now, losing to the Cats at said “Cattery” is usually a pretty stomachable result. It’s a tough place to win, and they’re a tough team to beat. But the way in which Fremantle was battered from pillar to post after heading into the season with such high expectations externally (and perhaps more important, internally) has alarm bells ringing down at the wharf.
Watching the game as a Freo fan, and subsequently following the public discourse that followed, I felt as though Longmuir had received his “first strike” in a season where he is effectively coaching with his job on the line.
There’s usually a pretty familiar process when a coach is about to get the sack.
First, they lose the fans. The group of people who are supposed to adore and worship you turn rabid, and united by their desire to see you gone, they make so much noise that it becomes hard to ignore.
Then you lose the playing group. The men you’re figuratively going into battle with each week lose confidence in you as a leader, and in extreme cases, mutiny is on the cards.
Finally, you lose your administration, and eventually the CEO gives you the flick because he doesn’t want to spend every minute of the day answering questions as to why you’re still employed.
On Saturday, Longmuir lost the fans. Now to be fair, in the day and age of social media, you can ALWAYS find someone willing to fire their coach after a loss. Overreactions are pretty standard, but they’re also usually tempered by a majority of sensible fans who will go into bat for their guy.
No one was going into bat for Longmuir after this one… It was evident the fans are out of patience, and to be brutally honest, they probably should be.
Longmuir employed some weird tactics in this one. For starters, I’m not sure what he was thinking, sitting Caleb Serong off the ball for 15 minutes while the game got out of hand early in the first term.
The star onballer was stranded in a dormant forward 50m arc, where he had no chance to impact the contest. In the second term, he spent a further ten minutes on the bench (which made zero sense, given he hadn’t exerted any form of energy in the previous quarter).
That’s a total 25 minutes off the ball in the first half, for a bloke who has back-to-back All-Australian blazers as one of the competition’s premier clearance winners.
I understand Longmuir wants his vice captain spending more time forward this year, and usually I’d be all for it, but when you’re lacking the likes of Shai Bolton and Hayden Young to replace him in the middle of the ground, you simply must abandon the plan and keep Serong around the footy as much as possible.
But it wasn’t just the use of his star midfielder that put the blowtorch on JL. He also made what appeared to be a very healthy Heath Chapman the sub, giving full games to Karl Worner and Corey Wagner ahead of the first round draft pick.
This one baffled me the most. I thought surely Chapman had to be injured or had copped a knock at training the day before, but no explanation has been forthcoming. It looks like Longmuir simply decided on other options, and while I am no AFL talent expert, I feel fairly confident in saying the likes of Worner and Wagner are sub-par players compared to Chapman.
Finally, there’s the ruck issue. Liam Reidy’s lack of progression is causing headaches for JL and his staff, and no one can seem to find the Panadol.
Reidy’s pre-season performances left a lot to be desired. He had his colours lowered by an untried Coen Livingstone in the Indigenous All-Stars game, and was taught a lesson by powerhouse Max Gawn in Mandurah. Now, I don’t want to crucify a bloke for losing a contest to Max Gawn, but I certainly would have liked to see more than three disposals from the big fella.
Still, despite these performances, JL stuck to his preferred structure and named Liam Reidy for Round One, rather than opting to play forward Pat Voss and send Luke Jackson into a full-time ruck role.
This would be more understandable if Reidy was actually going to play ruck… you know, the entire reason he is in the team…
Instead, Reidy ended up spending plenty of time forward, where he was completely ineffective, and Jackson spent more time in the ruck. I daresay Voss would have provided at least a little more impact in this spot.
In the end, Reidy attended 12 centre bounces, while Jackson attended 22. Fremantle was forced to abandon their original ruck plan (which they worked on all pre-season) at half-time of the opening game.
Now this is feeling a bit like a pile-on, and while I am absolutely a frustrated fan, the writer in me feels obliged to temper the emotion here. Longmuir’s men could come out next week, roll the Swans at home and get on the board. It would significantly ease the pressure on the embattled coach.
But what happens if they don’t? What happens if they get rolled again, by another big margin?
Well, I hope JL has a decent air-con, because that seat will get a hell of a lot warmer should they drop this one in front of a home crowd.
The Dockers will be hoping we look back on Saturday’s performance as a total outlier, but if it turns out to be a true reflection of where they’re at, and their season continues to unravel, JL won’t see it out.
