Fremantle Dockers coach Justin Longmuir is confident his team will improve and continue to be a flag contender

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir is confident his team has plenty of improvement in it after suffering the heartbreak of a one-point elimination final loss to Gold Coast at Optus Stadium on Saturday night.

The Dockers had high hopes for September after winning 12 of their last 14 matches to earn a home final, but suffered the devastation of their season coming to an end as Gold Coast stormed to victory in the dying seconds.

Having missed the finals in 2023 and 2024, Longmuir believes the team has shown it can take big leaps and constantly improve.

“There’s some things we need to improve in the way we play, but we’ve got a lot of natural development in our group still. All of our core players are still reasonably young and have improvement left in their careers,” Longmuir said.

“But we’re not that far off either. It’s disappointing because it felt like we had a lot more to give in this season. i think our footy over the last three or four months stacks up against any team. That’s what’s disappointing about exiting the way we’ve exited.

“The top nine were pretty even across the course of the year. I think our record coming in stacked up against the top nine. That leaves a bit of a hole and disappointment to be knocked out in the first week.”

The Dockers have already lost Nat Fyfe, Michael Walters and Quinton Narkle to retirement, and will make more decisions around their list in the coming weeks as they complete exit meetings with players.

Fremantle have been aggressive at the trade table in recent seasons, adding Luke Jackson and Shai Bolton, while also signing Pat Voss and Isaiah Dudley through the supplemental selection period.

Murphy Reid was an instant hit as the club’s top draft pick from last season and is the favourite to win the AFL Rising Star award.

The Dockers also overcame being without Hayden Young for the bulk of the season, losing Alex Pearce for long periods and having to carefully manage Sean Darcy throughout the year to finish the year in sixth spot.

Fyfe has watched the evolution of the list since the club started rebuilding in 2016. He believes the changes that have been made in recent years, along with the improvement of a large group of players, have put the Dockers in a strong position to have a prolonged period of contention.

“It’s no use selling false hope at this stage, but if you look at the profile of what we’ve been able to do over the last two seasons and the consistency of our performances, we’ve only lost three games of the last 13 or 14,” Fyfe said.

“We’ve learnt to win on the road, we’ve given ourselves every chance of evolving the way you’d like a list to. There’d be a lot of teams saying that about themselves, but I think we genuinely have the calibre of players in the right profile to have five or six bites of winning a premiership.”