Fremantle senior coach Justin Longmuir says that although there are still multiple familiar faces in his side who appeared in the 2022 finals series, his 2025 unit feels like a completely different team.

In 2022, Fremantle’s Semi Final side that lost to Collingwood featured 13 players (Amiss, Banfield, Brayshaw, Chapman, Clark, Cox, Darcy, Frederick, Pearce, Ryan, Serong, Switkowski, and Young) who played in Round 24’s thrilling win over the Bulldogs to lock Fremantle into the top eight for the first time in three seasons.

Speaking at his Wednesday morning media conference, Longmuir stated that it felt like his team had come a long way since 2022.

“To be honest, we feel like we're a really different team,” Longmuir said.

“We’ve evolved the forward line especially since then.

“We focus probably more on the growth this year rather than looking back that far.

“What we’ve been able to do is build a style of footy that is adaptive to the opposition we play against and to different game situations.

“We’ve lost clearances at times this year, but we’ve been able to rely on our ball movement.

“We’ve won clearances and been able to lock the ball in and play a front-half game.

“Our defence, in particular our backline, has been strong all year and has held up under pressure at times - especially against the better sides, as we saw on the weekend.

“I feel like we’re building a style of footy that is flexible and adaptable to different weeks, different games, and even different quarters in some sense.

“The maturity of the group and a bit more flexibility in the team has added to that.”

Speaking on the team's upcoming Elimination Final against either Hawthorn or Gold Coast, Longmuir stated that he and his side were indifferent to whichever opponent eventuated after tonight’s final game of the home-and-away season.

“We haven’t really thought about it too much,” Longmuir said.

“What will be, will be with the opponent.

“This week is about making our footy better, working on a few things in our game, and then whoever we play we’ll focus on next week.”

Handling finals football for the first time in three years, Longmuir believes that Sunday’s win over the Bulldogs was a good precursor.

“I don’t think the finals build-up will be as much as that game (against the Bulldogs),” Longmuir said.

“In some sense, the pressure will be less.

“I’m really proud of the way the players were able to stick to the process - and by process, I mean controlling the things you can control, which is really what you need to do week in and week out.

“Against the good sides, the free-flowing ball movement doesn’t come into it as much, and it becomes about the contest a lot more.

“We feel that when we’ve been able to bring teams into a contest and make it more of a contested game, we’ve been able to thrive.

“I feel like that, and the way we’ve defended teams, has really stood up against the better sides.”