During half time of Fox Footy’s Thursday Night Footy broadcast, the presenters ran through the talking points round five’s remaining games in their ‘blowtorch’ segment.

In their preview for Fremantle and Adelaide, they put the ‘blowtorch’ on third-year duo Andrew Brayshaw and Adam Cerra.

With captain Nat Fyfe ruled out due to a hamstring injury, Freo would be reliant on their top-five picks from the 2017 NAB AFL National Draft to ‘step up’.

Whether or not the 20-year-olds were watching the broadcast or not, they still got the message.

According to Champion Data, Brayshaw and Cerra were the top-two ranked players on the field with 144 and 134 ranking points respectively.

Brayshaw’s career-high of 144 points came from his eight marks, five tackles and 23 disposals at 83 per cent efficiency.

Cerra’s 134 points was also a career high, with 17 disposals, six marks, five tackles, five inside 50s and 17 disposals at 88 per cent efficiency. 

While the pair were equally important to Freo’s win, Brayshaw was singled out by the journalists in Justin Longmuir’s post-match media conference.

Longmuir praised Brayshaw’s work ethic, adding that his main room for improvement was his struggle to deliver consistently throughout a game. 

“Andrew’s a terrific trainer. He’s got a terrific attitude around the club,” Longmuir said.

“He’s probably been a little bit inconsistent, quarter in quarter out, as have a lot of players. 

“I thought today was clearly his best four quarter performance and it’s great reward for effort because everything he does, he does at a hundred mile an hour and he does it with a real purpose, so it was great to see him get the rewards.

“His first quarter was fantastic and he was probably, along with David Mundy, our most consistent player across the four quarters.

“It was terrific for him but I thought we shared the load among a lot of players today.”

Speaking post-match, Brayshaw felt the clash against the Crows was won and lost in the midfield.

In the second and third terms, Adelaide clawed back a four-goal deficit by winning the clearances 12-7.

In the final term, Freo regained the ascendency in the middle winning the clearances 7-4 and kicking three goals to none.

“We held the corridor pretty well, we forced them wide,” Brayshaw said.

“When they scored heavily, it was when we let them through the inside.

“In that last quarter we really protected the inside and I thought that held us in good stead and essentially, won us the game.”

And it wasn’t just Brayshaw and Cerra that helped Freo across the line.

According to the AFL Player Ratings, after Brayshaw and Cerra, Freo’s next best players were no.8 pick in 2016 Griffin Logue and no.17 pick in 2018 Sam Sturt.

“Griffin was unreal,” Brayshaw said.

“Every time he had a one-on-one, he just brought it to ground, he scrapped and fought. He was definitely one of our best players today.”