Advertisement

Docker wants tough jobs

Lee Spurr, front, battles Garrick Ibbotson during Fremantle training.

Fremantle defender Lee Spurr has no intention of shying away from the job of closing down the opposition's gun small forwards in 2015, setting his sights on a flying start to the season after a sluggish opening this year.

Spurr finished the season as one of Fremantle's best players after some tough early moments on Hawthorn goalsneak Cyril Rioli and Port Adelaide's All- Australian Chad Wingard.

The 27-year-old said he welcomed the mental challenge of trying to shut down the influential small forwards.

"They are really exciting and electric players and probably the hardest thing on those players is that you can be on top of them for two or three quarters and in five minutes they can kick four goals," Spurr said.

"A strong focus going forward is having that mental strength to play on them for the whole four quarters. I like the responsibility to play your role for the team, have your input and do what you have to do."

Spurr said making sure that he was physically ready for the start of next season was the top priority.

"Personally, I thought I had a bit of a slow start to the season so I am looking forward to having a really big pre-season and come out and start really strongly," he said.

And, after being elevated into the club's leadership group for 2014, he wants to build further on those leadership qualities.

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

He said the club had been delighted with the condition most players had returned from their break in, with the club's younger personnel a key to driving the team's improvement next season. "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.

"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.

"We want young players putting pressure on and pushing into the side and we want everyone to try and be in the 22.

"We are doing a lot of training, a lot of ball work and we are getting the footies out 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."

"… you can be on top … for two or three quarters and in five minutes they can kick four goals." " *Lee Spurr * on the AFL's small forwards