(upbeat music) Good game. Tomorrow night, Fremantle hosting Richmond. Dusty Martin, he not coming to Perth. He said ah, I'm done. Now the Cumberland comes in. Brendan Cox returns, great to have him back, of course, after serious injury. Couple of weeks in the waffle. Michael Walters gets a straight recall after coming back from injury. Hugh Davies is out, but that's okay because they do get Brendan Cox back and you can't keep Coxie out. Brendan Walker has got an injured shoulder. Matthew Boyd joins us from the female football club. Boyd, you appreciate your time. Tim Gossey, Nash Brazel. It's like old homework. - Ha ha, yeah. G'day, guys. Great to talk to you. It's great to have Brazel in the-- - Yes. - Where I've been, where I can go. - Thanks, Boydie. Hey, what's going on there? So you were, you were, you were at the pies together, were you not? - We were. - Okay. - What about, Boydie, he was a big supporter of the netball team as well, always got around us, felt love? - Well, yeah, I've never seen, I've never seen athletes trying harder or with more purpose, really, than the netball game. So it was a bit of an eye-opening experience for me to understand how hard and how they trained and how hard they worked and how much they've just in their careers. - No doubt, so now that we've got Ash Brazel, the female AFLW, of course, so which is absolutely brilliant. Hey, for the month of July, children aged 14 and a runder, can watch FreeO Live at Opto Stadium for free. - What? - Go to ticketmaster.com.au, heaps of events for kids to do pre and post game as well. Hey, Boydie, Brett and Cox, straight back, you're not straight back in. Couple of games in the waffle, building some minutes there and some sort of getting over that long-term injury. Comes in for Hugh Davies. That's a huge boost for you. Josh Draper keeps his spot no surprise after the way he played last week. - Yeah, now it's obviously great to have talks you back in the sun. - He's had a really, really tough year, clearly. He had a bit of an injury over the pre-season and it's really hard in reconditioning to get himself available for round one and then obviously a really significant Hemi injury in that opening game for us, which has kept him in that building phase all year, pretty much, but he's had a couple of really strong hitting up to a pure level the last couple of weeks and he's ready to come back in. So we're really excited to get him back in and obviously you mentioned, Hugh Davies goes out after a couple of weeks in the ones and he got a bit of a taste of ASL footy, which is great for him. And then you mentioned Josh Draper, who was without standing last week for us in a really critical win for us. - Michael Walter's back in the side after missing two games. Was that a surprise? - Not really for me, yeah, given we picked the team wasn't a surprise, it was come back in, but yeah, he's clearly a quality player. You know, he's able to impact the game with probably minimal position. So, yeah, he's someone who we've been back in and we're really confident in 11 impact for us. - You take on Richmond. You know, we would know that they've been absolutely decimated by injury. - Still get the feeling that their very best could create some dramas. They've got to be good all the time. What's your expectation of what you're going to see tomorrow night with Richmond? - Oh yeah, we expect opposition's best every week and yeah, that's what we prepare for. And we try and identify the threats that the opposition will bring at the very best. So, we understand that they've got some real talent in their team and when you're able to allow them to play with speed and get those goals, so it looks running back towards goal with they can get, you know, a few dangerous looks for them. So, we're really, really aware of that and that's what we're preparing for and they'll hope that their boys can, you know, come back up a really positive weight last week. - Matthew Boyd from the female football club, defensive coaches online. Hey, Boyd, he will from Claremont has texted in. He said Boyd was an absolute gun inside ball. Why on earth is he's the back line coach at Free Middle? - Ah, I appreciate those kind words. I'm not quite sure about absolute gun, but it's funny. I played the last couple of years of my career as a backman or a defender. I'm not sure it's a very loose term defender after the last couple of years. All of a sudden, I'm more of a defensive expert now. I love the sort of a game and I'm working with the back line. It's a really unique and special group of players who are the back men and women of each team. And it's, you know, they're a great bunch to work with. You know, I love trying to hone more craft in the defensive sort of game first. - Yeah, and Alex Pearce, we all know that he's out with injury. How's he going? I've seen him back in the club with my own eyes, but also on the social media. What's his impact now being obviously not playing? How will he lead from the sideline? - Yeah, he's a fantastic leader on and off the field for us. So he's still having a really significant impact in terms of leading around the group, you know, in meetings and just around the club in general. He's really clearly get back to play and he's probably pushing as hard as anyone to get back to play. And I'm not sure he only got caught by him just yet, but I know it would do everything he possibly can to get back out on the field as quick as possible. And he's had a fantastic year, so we're just hoping to get it back as soon as possible, really. - Hey, boy, very strong question without notice. In fact, look, we've got some random free metal fans walking outside our studio here at SCN who are in free metal jumpers. They're trying to get in. Are you training at Optis today? - Yeah, we are, yep. I'm standing on Optis oval as we speak. - There you go. That's why they're trying to get in. Oh, brilliant stuff. Okay, you're standing on Optis oval. My question would be asked, there's been a lot of talk about the ground. Not so much from free metal. Tom Barris made a couple of comments. So I think I just did say something a couple of weeks ago. You're standing on it. What do you make of it? What do you make of it underfoot? - Are you touching the ground right now? - I'm touching it here with my runners, yep. We're touching it, it's a fantastic stadium. We're really lucky to have it as a home ground. Like probably all stadium, like all synapses, there's patchy bits, but it's a fantastic arena. And we love flying here, so we've got no real issues with it. We get to train here, we get to feel it underfoot. Every second week, we get to play around, and we absolutely love it. So I've got no real issues with it myself. - Yeah, good point. You're making I think every club that sort of bags it, eventually venues west to run the stadium, they might turn around and say, "Well, don't train on it then." And we'll give it a day to grow. So you might be careful what you wish for. Hey, mate, I really liked the way this team is playing. If you could blueprint a performance was last weeks against Sydney defensively and also offensively, was that almost as good as you could go? And if you could blueprint that and take it to every contest, every game going forward, that would be it. - Are there still areas in our game last week that we need to work on, but we're clearly really strong in a lot of areas of the game. We scored well, we scored 99 points, 5-400. So if you can score around 100 points, clearly your ball movement and your scoring power was really strong, but we did let through on the defensive stage, as you mentioned. So we did let through 98 points. I'm not quite a doctor to have you got that. So there's probably a few things. And the thing with Sydney is they absolutely punish your turnovers, and that's what good sides are able to do. Nowadays, it's punished those turnovers, but through, if you talk about from a contest, the physicality in posing ourselves on the footy on the man and the ball, and being really organised and connected across the ground, like we'll be really happy with those elements of our game. So I feel a couple of little areas to tie up and work on, which is great for us, but overall, recently plays with the performance last week. - And the last one before we let you go, do you downplay the emotion of last week's huge win? Huge win. A top four spot is now certainly in your grasp. You go against the grain and beat Sydney in Sydney, which not many Cubs do at any time, not just this year. Do you bottle that up, or do you reset really quickly? And have you reset really quickly? - Oh, you have to reset really quickly in this competition. Otherwise you get, you know, you get smacked in the face by the next thing that's coming up against you. So it's a real balance though, isn't it? Because you want to take confidence from the things you did well last week to put a really strong performance together, but you don't want to get comfortable with that performance either, so it's a balancing act of making sure you prepare the right way, you value the right things in preparation in the game to make sure you can try and replicate performances like that. But it's not a given. You don't get any credit for what you did last week. You got to earn it all again. So that's the challenge this week. - Good on you, mate. Appreciate your time. Enjoy the training session out there. Could you let these Frito fans in, the faithful are trying to get inside the ground and they're tapping on doors and trying to jump gates, mate. Everyone wants a piece of the Fremantle Footy Club. Thanks for joining us. - No, I forgot, I can do a quick one. (laughing) - Matthew Boyd from the Fremantle Football Club, we appreciate his time this morning.
