There might be a fierce rivalry between Fremantle and West Coast, however there were no premiership points or pride on the line as Freo ran out 47-point winners in Saturday’s scratch match at Lathlain Park.
Despite the lack of meaning behind Freo’s victory, especially with West Coast missing a number of star players including Nic Naitanui, Tim Kelly, Elliot Yeo and Josh Kennedy, second year defender Hayden Young said it was important for the group to build a habit of winning games.
“We’re just looking at what we did well and how we can improve. We’re not too concerned with the result,” Young said.
“It’s obviously good to win and we want to train to win and practice winning, but we’ll just look at how we played and take it to next week and see if we can keep improving.
“We came in with clear focuses. I think we executed pretty well, we wanted to keep the ball in our front half for the majority of the game and that allowed us to have a pretty good win.”
It was Young’s first hitout against AFL opposition since injuring his ankle in round six last year against St Kilda and the 19-year-old agreed that it was just great to be back.
“Bloody oath! That’s why I’m out there, to play footy and I really enjoyed it,” Young said.
“I felt I have a lot of confidence in my body after getting through my first pre-season and competing my reconditioning.
“I felt really comfortable out there and it was good to get out there and play a full game.”
The clash was a chance for untried ruckman Lloyd Meek to test himself against West Coast’s Nathan Vardy. Rookie forward Josh Treacy had his first test against an AFL opponent and Young was impressed with both players.
“I thought Meek was huge today. He stood up with a few of our tall players going down” Young said.
“He left a mark on the ground, it was a great effort from ‘Meeky’ and I thought he played really well.
“Treacy was pretty exciting today wasn’t he? He’s a big presence and he leads up at the footy well so it was good to see some reward for his effort.”
Treacy kicks truly and Serong gets around him.
— Fremantle Dockers (@freodockers) February 27, 2021
Don’t mind that combo.
?? 88 ?? 35#foreverfreo pic.twitter.com/SL5dftByR0
Fremantle will take on West Coast once again next Sunday at Optus Stadium in the AAMI Community Series as pre-season ramps up for round one.
“It’s going to be good to back on our home deck and, hopefully, playing in front of a few fans,” Young said.
“It will be a different atmosphere but we’ll have the same focuses going into the game.”
