![\"Justin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0b34b1ae0cdbb22ffdb601c057b81aedba635455.jpg\")
Camera IconJustin Longmuir hailed Fremantle fans\u2019 support. Credit: Michael Willson\/AFL Photos\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\nFremantle coach Justin Longmuir is adamant the Dockers\u2019 time will come and they will come out the other side stronger they pick up the pieces in the wake of their crushing AFL grand final defeat.<\/p>\n
Longmuir spoke of his overwhelming pride in the players after they fell marginally short of a maiden flag triumph after Brisbane came from the clouds to kick four straight goals later and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a club function in the aftermath of the defeat, Longmuir vowed the devastating defeat would not break the club as they will go back to the drawing board next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know our time will come. I know the character we\u2019ve got within our footy club will bounce back out of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the time for it now. The time is to sit in this, get around each other, have your teammates\u2019 back, have your brothers\u2019 back and the time will come for us to move on and get better and learn from it and I know this group will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longmuir said while the defeat stung tremendously, he took plenty of courage and belief from fact it took an unbelievable late-game hot streak from the newly-minted three-peat champions to beat them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve probably got over the devastation and just feel really proud of the efforts of not only the players but I just thought we had a real crack and gave it our best,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, on reflection, we\u2019ll look at it and we got beaten by one of the better teams of all-time who took some unbelievable moments in the last four minutes to be able to beat us and it took something unbelievable to beat us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019ll look at it in due course.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo play our best footy of the finals series on the biggest stage was an unbelievable achievement. I\u2019m so proud of the players for doing that and I\u2019m just so proud we could handle the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot was made of Brisbane being there and they would handle the week better than us and those sorts of things but we embraced the week, accepted what we needed to, embraced the normal of the week and came out and played our best footy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camera IconJustin Longmuir hailed Fremantle fans\u2019 support. Credit: Michael Willson\/AFL Photos\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Longmuir also hailed the impact of the Fremantle fans who crossed the Nullarbor in spite of eye-watering airline price hikes and made their presence felt once they landed in Melbourne as they painted the streets purple in the lead-up to the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone understands how much the Purple Army have got behind us at Optus this year and they\u2019ve really rocked that joint and we\u2019ve averaged nearly 55,000 at Optus and made it such a home ground advantage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see everyone come to Melbourne and rock the parade and rock the MCG and get behind the team, we\u2019ve got a really passionate supporter group and that\u2019s what hurts a little bit deep down.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone who supports us and has come along the journey with us, it feels like we let them down a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir is adamant the Dockers\u2019 time will come and they will come out the other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,10124,588,85],"class_list":["post-910615","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-fremantle-dockers","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910615","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=910615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}