Fresh Freo firing for Suns

Fremantle workhorse Matt de Boer has warned that the Dockers will be freshened up, not rusty when they take on Gold Coast at Patersons Stadium on Saturday, and ominously declared they had identified areas of improvement from their 70-point round one win over Collingwood.

De Boer, a solid contributor in the win over the Magpies, said the Dockers would target a vastly improved first quarter when they took on the Suns.

“The boys have freshened up a little bit more. We have still worked really hard on the track. We had a big focus on improvement during the week and at training. We had a solid session on Saturday to consolidate our efforts in round one,” he said.

“We had some strong focuses to work on and we have trained on those this week as well.”

“Q1 (first quarter) really let us down we feel,” he said. “There was a bit more focus on us coming out of the blocks.”

De Boer said no-one at Fremantle could afford to drop their level of performance because of the level of competition for spots with Garrick Ibbotson, Zac Clarke, Nick Suban, Hayden Crozier and Clancee Pearce all pressing for berths in the senior team.

“We know that competition for spots is really healthy and is going to push everyone up,” he said. “The competition we have now got down at Peel where the boys play and train together and really try to take themselves up to the next standard. It is really going to push everybody along.”

He said the return of Anthony Morabito in the WAFL had been “warming” but was no accident.

“There was a big show of players who went down to watch them and just seeing him string a few games together now is really warming and pleasing to see,” he said.

“But it is also reward for effort. It hasn’t happened by accident. He has really dug in and done the hard yards behind closed doors both mentally and physically. To see him go out there and use his left and his right and show what he is really capable of is really pleasing.”