OUR BEST SIDE* (*SOME EXCLUSIONS APPLY)

On Wednesday, Justin Longmuir ruled out resting players. On Thursday, Fremantle rested three players. This column has stopped taking JL’s press conferences literally and started enjoying them as performance art. The minor premiers head to Marvel with house money, a debutant, and one eye on September.

Fremantle, 1st, 19-3, minor premiers. Crowned last Friday with a 112-88 dismissal of Adelaide — the Club’s second minor premiership, sealed in the retro strip, in front of a full house. Nineteen wins from the past 21 games. Nothing left to prove before September, which is when everything must be proven.

Carlton, 10th at 11-10-1, locked into the wildcard round. Credit where due: the story of the season’s back half. A 1-8 rabble when Michael Voss stepped down; a 10-2-1 juggernaut since under Josh Fraser, who was handed the full-time job on a three-year deal this week. His first game as permanent coach is against the minor premiers. Welcome to the big chair, Josh.

Let us begin with JL. Asked about resting players for this game, Justin Longmuir was unequivocal: no real flags, no management needs, “we’ll play our best side.” All very in line with the AFL guidelines. Twenty-four hours later, the team dropped: Future Norm Smith Medalist Sam Switkowski, rested. Jye Amiss, five goals last week, second in the Coleman, rested. Heath Chapman, rested. Now, in fairness to JL, this is the same man who told us the MCG trip wasn’t a dress rehearsal and that Bunbury held no fears, so the Purple Army has long since learned to treat his pressers the way you treat a magician’s patter: enjoy the words, watch the hands. “Best side”, it turns out, comes with an asterisk, a footnote, and a doctor’s certificate. And honestly? Good. Rest the lot of them. Wrap Amiss in bubble wrap and post him to the first Friday in September.

The changes bring two stories worth the airfare on their own. Tobyn Murray debuts — a 21-year-old mature-age recruit who missed multiple drafts, ground away in Geelong’s VFL system, got taken at pick 40, and has spent the year helping Peel Thunder to the top of the WAFL ladder. A debut in the last round of a minor premiership season, with a finals audition attached: that is the stuff careers are launched from. And Bailey Banfield returns for his first AFL game of 2026, his last one, for those keeping tally of this column’s emotional scars, was the 2025 elimination final against Gold Coast. Nine seconds. One point. Banfield has waited eleven months and 27 disposals a week at Peel for another crack. The last man out of the darkest night walks back in the week before the redemption tour begins.

Now, the required respect for the opposition, and this week it is genuinely required. Carlton under Fraser are no joke: Patrick Cripps racked up 34 disposals and Sam Walsh 33 in last week’s draw with the Bulldogs, Marc Pittonet brings up his 100th game, and the Blues have that particular menace of a side playing with zero pressure and a new coach to impress. There is also an uncomfortable statistical ghost in this fixture: Carlton have covered the betting line in ten of their last eleven meetings with Fremantle. They lose to us, but they lose annoyingly, in that specific Carlton way, with a late flurry that ruins multis all over the country. The Dockers have won the past two encounters, including 103-89 earlier this year, but both were at Optus, and Marvel’s fluorescent hothouse is the Blues’ lounge room. With three of ours chilling on the beach, this will not be a stroll.

A quick note on the weather, as tradition demands: there isn’t any. Marvel Stadium has a roof, so tomorrow’s forecast is 18 degrees and fluorescent with zero per cent chance of rain and a 100 per cent chance of that strange indoor twilight that makes every game look like it’s being played inside a fridge. For a Fremantle side that has spent all winter mastering conditions from Bunbury squalls to MCG swirls, a climate-controlled tune-up is the football equivalent of a warm-down lap. The 11:15am WST bounce, however, remains an act of violence against Western Australian Saturday morning schedules. Bacon on. Alarm set. You know the drill by now.

And then there is the matter of the September landscape, which shifted seismically this week for reasons nobody enjoyed. Sydney, second on the ladder, our most likely grand final opponent, suspended five players for the remainder of the season over the incident at Melbourne’s Pullman Hotel, which remains the subject of a police investigation. Heeney, Warner, Jordon, Bice and Blakey are gone for the year. This column isn’t going to make light of any of it; the allegations at the centre of that story are serious, and the people involved on every side of it deserve better than punchlines from a supporter blog two time zones away. What can be said, soberly, is this: the finals race has been redrawn in a single week, and every club in the top ten is quietly recalculating what September now looks like. Fremantle’s job is unchanged, win the games in front of us, but the road just moved.

So: the shape of tomorrow. Carlton come hard, because Fraser sides do and because a full Marvel crowd farewelling their season will demand it. Cripps and Walsh will win their share of the footy. But this Fremantle midfield, Serong fresh off 29 disposals, twelve clearances and two goals in the minor-premiership sealer, Brayshaw humming, Shai Bolton in the kind of form that had the AFL’s own podcast purring this week does not take August off. Treacy and Voss will feast on a defence missing Nick Haynes. The polish gets applied, the debutant gets his moment, Banfield gets his, and the minor premiers walk into September twenty-and-three with the deepest squad in the competition and every box ticked.

THE VERDICT

The Blues bring the form, the crowd and the annoying habit of covering the line. We bring the best team in the competition, minus three men in deckchairs. The tune-up gets tuned, the kids get their moment, and the season’s final siren sounds with Fremantle exactly where it has sat since May: on top.

FREMANTLE BY 19