Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir said he was "incredibly proud" of his side after the Dockers defied a brutal fixture and a half-time deficit to overrun Hawthorn in AFL Round 9, 2026, with the win underlining his belief in the group's fitness and mentality.
Asked whether he could believe the comeback win, Longmuir was matter-of-fact. "Oh yeah, of course I can believe it. I'm not sure why I wouldn't," he said. "We've found ourselves in similar situations over the last 18 months and found a way."
The Dockers had been broadly even at half-time before a third-quarter shift in field position turned the contest. Longmuir credited the group's discipline against a punishing schedule.
"To have four games in 18 days, back to back to back six-day breaks, didn't hear any players talking, winging about it, talking about how sore they were. They just got to work," Longmuir said. "Win, lose or draw tonight, I thought we prepared really well, and that's on the players."
He singled out Brennon Cox's defensive transformation in the second half. "Huge. I mean Steven May probably couldn't have stopped him in the first half the way we were letting him transition the ball. When you allow a good team like that to transition the ball through the corridor like we did, it's so hard for a back to be isolated. It's just impossible to stop. So we took that away from him in the second half, which helped Coxy. I thought he was a bit more proactive with his positioning, which gave him first look at the ball, and from that position he actually came forward and made some big plays as well."
Longmuir was equally effusive about Luke Jackson's final-quarter explosion. "Coxy gave us something in the ruck early in the last, which gave us field position, and Jacko being forward actually probably straightened us up a little bit and got us deep entries. Then when he went into the ruck a little bit fresher, he got to work. He's a bit of a barometer for us, Jacko. When he's up and going and doing his thing on ball, it just adds another layer to our stoppage work."
The Fremantle coach also paid tribute to his fitness staff for keeping the playing list available across a brutal stretch.
"Our fitness staff have done an amazing job to get us to a level where we didn't look like the tightest team out there given the back-to-back-to-back six-day breaks," he said. "Availability is strong, touch wood. They've done an amazing job to get the playing group up to a level where they can handle it."
The win positions Fremantle as one of the AFL's emerging contenders heading into the back half of the 2026 home-and-away season.