In the season finale of Old Bull Young Buck, special guest Justin Longmuir initially used a straight bat when asked who his favourite player was, saying ‘there’s too many to choose from.’
But co-host Griffin Logue continued to press, highlighting Longmuir’s perceived fondness for a couple of Freo’s younger players.
“So why do you love Andy (Brayshaw) and ‘Sturty’ (Sam Sturt) so much? Sturty is probably the one that stands out for me,” Logue asked.
Longmuir admitted that he’d been especially impressed with Sturt’s dedication to learn away from the football field, after two injury interrupted seasons restricted the medium forward to four games.
“He’s an offensively minded guy, he loves his offence, Sturty. He loves kicking a goal,” Longmuir said.
“The thing that I like is Sturty’s passion for the game, even when he’s been injured this year. He’s asked to sit in match committee a couple times and sit in our strategy meetings.
“When he went back to Melbourne he went and watched a couple games and did some opposition analysis for us. He’s got a real passion for the way the game’s played, which is something I admire.”
As well as highlighting development and consistency would be the key to Fremantle’s 2022 season, Longmuir said Fremantle needed to have a more aggressive style of play.
“Four or five of our best wins were probably followed by four or five of our worst results. That consistency to be able to embrace the grind week-in-week-out is something that we need to build on,” Longmuir said.
“Clearly, we need to get injuries right, we need to have our best team out there more often, so it’s something we’ll work on hard over the pre-season.
“I think our offence is just not good enough at the moment and it dropped away badly with our mid-forward connection late in the year.
“Our ability to score off turnovers wasn’t good enough. A lot goes into that, (we need to) lift our pressure, be more consistent with our tackling and the pressure we put on the opposition, we’ll be able to force better turnovers and that will make it easier to score.
“It’s the offensive piece that we need to get better at over the pre-season.”
