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Spurr buoyed by young Freo talent

Lee Spurr is encouraged by Fremantle's youngsters. Pic: WA News

Fremantle defender Lee Spurr has backed the club’s younger generation to step up to the challenge in 2015, expressing delight at the way the Dockers tyros had presented themselves for pre-season.

And Spurr, a member of the Dockers leadership group last season, says he wants to take his leadership a step further in 2015 by learning off club veterans Matthew Pavlich, Aaron Sandilands and Luke McPharlin.

AXED DOCKER GOES BUSH

One of the success stories of Fremantle’s rookie list, Spurr described the pre-season campaign so far as “gruelling”.

“We came back and we had strict guidelines that we had to hit, and to the players' credit we all came back in great nick," he said.

"Training has been gruelling so far and it is only going to get tougher. So we are looking forward to the challenge, especially the younger players, which is good because that is the group that is going to drive us going forward.”

Spurr said the Dockers had focused more heavily on ball work this season than in previous years and were concentrating on setting their own standards rather than worrying about how fit Port Adelaide, now considered the AFL benchmark, were.

“It has been well reported that Port are a really good running side but we are not worried about them, we are just focused on ourselves at the moment, try to get ourselves as fit as possible and improve our footy and that is the main focus over this pre-season – to improve our footy,” he said.

“We are doing a lot of training, a lot of ball work and we are getting to the footies a lot quicker this year, so that is really good, the players enjoy it. It makes it a lot easier to do the running with the footy in the hand than running laps around the outside.

“In my few years that I have been in the game the standards just keep getting higher and higher and the pressure on players is just getting higher and higher.

“But as individuals you want to grow to that and rise to the challenge and we have been really good at that this pre-season and we are looking forward to keeping that going.

“You do your role, you train hard and play hard and opportunities will present and that is what we want. We want young players putting pressure on and pushing into the side and we want everyone to try and be in the 22.”

Spurr believes his leadership can go to another level.

“I have been a leadership group one year and I want to improve those qualities and I want to learn off players such as Matthew Pavlich and Aaron Sandilands and Luke McPharlin, that have been leaders for a long time.”