Treacy on the BackChat podcast before the season started<\/a>. His belief in the group was unbelievably impressive.<\/p>\nTreacy doesn\u2019t drink alcohol (during the season) \u2013 and several other players don\u2019t drink off the back of what he does. He trains the hardest and he pushes himself to limit.<\/p>\n
He says: \u2018This is what we\u2019re doing and this is what it\u2019s going to result in\u2019 \u2013 and there\u2019s no deviation in his belief Freo will be a good football team.<\/p>\n
Josh Treacy should be Fremantle\u2019s next captain. (Photo by Daniel Carson\/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Treacy\u2019s attitude and presence during that interview blew me away. That doesn\u2019t just happen overnight. It\u2019s happened over probably six years of this group being together.<\/p>\n
Brayshaw and Serong had set the running and touch standards for so long. Everything that\u2019d ever happened at Fremantle over the last five years at training, it was those two at the forefront.<\/p>\n
But now Treacy is the standard-setter.<\/p>\n
The Dockers have their \u2018mark group\u2019 at training where they do something like 100 marks a session. They just have people kick balls at the players at 100 miles an hour \u2013 and there\u2019s now this big pack of players that line up to compete against Josh.<\/p>\n
What Treacy doing on-field is now just as \u2013 if not more \u2013 inspiring than Brayshaw and Serong. In fact, I\u2019m sure those two star mids, who\u2019ve had to carry the load at Freo for five years, would be stoked they no longer \u2018have\u2019 to be the best two players on the ground for Freo to win.<\/p>\n
JL PROVES DOUBTERS WRONG<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also so well-coached.<\/p>\n
Justin Longmuir for a long time has been maligned as a coach, both in the Victorian media and here in Western Australia. Right now, they are the best-coached team in the AFL.<\/p>\n
Justin Longmuir: ‘Not our best self yet’ | 11:11<\/p>\n
They can win in different ways and scenarios. The clarity each player has in role and the absolute single-minded focus means when the team gets in close games now, when they\u2019ve got a big moment on the field in the spur of the moment, they all know what they\u2019re doing and what\u2019s going to happen. Because they\u2019re on the same page.<\/p>\n
When they lose someone like Serong to injury, or they don\u2019t have Young or Pearce or Darcy or Matt Johnson, they just get a player to come in and play the same role and keep going the way they.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d have him as the best coach in the AFL right now. I don\u2019t think you do that over six months.<\/p>\n
Justin Longmuir is making the right calls. (Photo by Daniel Carson\/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
WHY THIS IS SUSTAINABLE<\/p>\n
Despite what the ladder says, the Dockers haven\u2019t been \u2018dominant\u2019 this year.<\/p>\n
The 124-point win over the Kangaroos on the weekend might\u2019ve been their first four-quarter performance they\u2019ve put together this year. That tells me they\u2019ve got room for growth.<\/p>\n
Previously, they\u2019ve just been finding ways to win a lot of their games \u2013 like against Adelaide, Collingwood and Hawthorn. They\u2019ve held on to leads after fast starts, come from behind after a slow patch in the middle of the game. They\u2019ve been \u2018everything\u2019, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve been at their best.<\/p>\n
I know talk around \u2018when\u2019 the Dockers will lose a game will start soon, if it hasn\u2019t already. They might drop a match \u2013 and you don\u2019t have to lose one \u2013 but what you do want to do as a footy club is still find ways to win when things aren\u2019t 100 per cent smooth. Because that\u2019s what the best clubs do.<\/p>\n
I think it is sustainable because I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve really played their best footy yet.<\/p>\n
‘Dreadful’ – King blasts Kangaroos | 02:03<\/p>\n
HANDLING EXPECTATIONS<\/p>\n
The Dockers\u2019 run home is elite. Five of their next seven games are at Optus Stadium. Overall, they only have to leave WA four times for the rest of the home and away season.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t see them dropping out of the top two on the ladder.<\/p>\n
They do play the likes of Sydney, Geelong and Gold Coast during over the next month \u2013 and they\u2019ll probably drop one of those matches, because they\u2019re good sides too.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t think it particularly matters whether they win out for the rest of the year or if they lose a couple of games. The way they\u2019re playing is incredibly consistent and they can beat you in a lot of different ways.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not just a corridor-blitz, handball run-and-gun team all the time. But they can be.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not just a high-possession, high-retention, kick-mark team. But they can be.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not just a physical, long-down-the-line, contest-after-contest team. But they can be.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve got so many different levers to pull. They\u2019re the most consistent, best-coached and most-balanced side in the AFL.<\/p>\n
So 2026 is no pisstake.<\/p>\n
Will Schofield is a West Coast premiership defender who played 194 games for the Eagles. He is also a Fox Footy analyst and host of the BackChat Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We started running with \u2018Flagmantle\u2019 in 2022 when the Dockers made the jump into the top eight for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-724020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724020","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=724020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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