Cricket
Racing
Rugby
League
Motorsport
Football
Golf
Combat Sports
Basketball
Tennis
Other Sports
Sport Nation
Inactions have consequences: What soft Dockers must say about Longmuir
Mark Duffield • May 5th, 2025 1:14 pm
The problem with the Dockers right now? Their trajectory. You know what is wrong with their trajectory? They don’t have one.
They have allowed themselves to become a stagnant football club over two and a half seasons despite having one of the league’s most exciting lists.
Justin Longmuir is the one with his job on the line here but this is on everyone at Fremantle from president Chris Sutherland and his board down to CEO Simon Garlick the footy department heads and the coaches and players.
The messaging started from the top. Longmuir has twice been offered half hearted and half arsed contract extensions or employment circumstance changes to quieten noise on his future instead of reminding the footy department and the players what would actually quieten the noise – performance.
And on performance the club has waited for success to come to it instead of chasing it and demanding it.
Justin Longmuir’s team has plateaued as a group because players have plateaued individually. This is not a hungry culture. This is a soft culture – never softer than how they played on Friday.
The AFL is a ruthless business – improvement must be relentlessly pursued and demanded. Longmuir has chosen to try and negotiate to get it. As we said on this show a couple of weeks back. Either coaches burn players or players burn coaches. Justin Longmuir is being burned at the stake by a player group that looks satisfied and complacent despite having achieved precisely nothing.
And that is on him. Ruby Schleicher on Fox’s footy coverage said Longmuir at three quarter time was pleading with players to find something to show something. Pleading. This was not a time for pleading. This was a time to read the riot act. This was a time to remind poor performers that actions or inactions have consequences.
The list of players who have stagnated or regressed since the 2022 finals is long. The list of performers who have advanced or maintained high standards is short.
Andrew Brayshaw and Caleb Serong front up every week and were understandably prime targets for Ross Lyon to shut down. Josh Treacy has come on in leaps and bounds and was equally understandably the match up for All-Australian defender Callum Wilkie.
Forget the club’s rhetoric about Longmuir’s future. He will not coach the Dockers in 2026 unless they play finals in 2025. It is time the club said that. It speaks to actions and inactions having consequences. It might send a message to players who have been failing to perform without suffering consequences.
