Full match coverage and stats<\/a><\/p>\n“Fremantle were good and we were dreadful,” Clarkson said.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps you have a little bit of shame because we want to come over here and be putting on a better performance than we did today.<\/p>\n
“That sat us on the back foot early in terms of contest and we never really recovered from it.”<\/p>\n
Clarkson conceded the Kangaroos failed to adequately handle the break in routine during their mid-season bye last round.<\/p>\n
“How often do we see that, that a team is just so poor coming back from a bye and having a rest?” he said.<\/p>\n
“You get out of your routine and you get out of your resilient, tough approach.<\/p>\n
“We were just nowhere in that space today.”<\/p>\n
Adding to North’s embarrassment, the horror show against Fremantle came in a “home” game it sold to the WA Government.<\/p>\n
It was played at Bunbury’s Hands Oval, about 175km south of Perth, where the Kangaroos performed far more admirably in a narrow win over West Coast last year.<\/p>\n
They next meet the Eagles at Optus Stadium on Saturday in the second of two consecutive WA “home” fixtures.<\/p>\n
Clarkson welcomed the chance for the Kangaroos to regroup while spending the week together in the west.<\/p>\n
“When you have results like today, the best thing to do is be together and be on the road,” Clarkson said.<\/p>\n
“I’d reckon it will smarten us all up. If we don’t come to a game of footy ready to compete from start to finish, you’re going to get your pants pulled down.<\/p>\n
“That was certainly the case today, but the beauty of the game is we get another opportunity in seven days’ time to try to rectify that.<\/p>\n
“But we know exactly where it sits \u2013 how hard and tough do we want to be at the contest?”<\/p>\n
The dominant performance ensured Fremantle (12-1) will spend a third consecutive week on top of the ladder in pursuit of its maiden premiership.<\/p>\n
The Dockers have the bye next round, after which Caleb Serong, Brennan Cox and Matthew Johnson are all set to return from injuries to bolster the competition’s hottest team.<\/p>\n
Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir warned the premiership favourite is still capable of vast improvement after setting a club-record winning margin.<\/p>\n
“We can get better in personnel, but there’s still improvement (in the group). We’re not our best version yet,” Longmuir said.<\/p>\n
“The challenge for us as a playing group is to remain hungry and keep searching for areas we can improve, because everyone below us on the ladder is doing exactly that.<\/p>\n
“So I don’t sit here and think we’re our best version yet.<\/p>\n
“Through personnel and the way we’re playing, we’ve got areas of our game that we can get better at, and that’s what we’ve got to strive to do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alastair Clarkson rued the Kangaroos’ poor display in a thrashing at the hands of the Dockers North Melbourne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,83,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-719087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-text","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}