The Patience Problem: What Justin Longmuir Is Actually Building at Fremantle

There is a particular kind of silence that follows a football club when it is neither failing dramatically nor succeeding loudly. For Fremantle, that silence has become familiar. The Dockers do not generate the same headlines as Victorian powerhouses, and their coach, Justin Longmuir, rarely gives the media the theatrical moments that turn press conferences into content. But beneath that quiet exterior, something more interesting is happening than the weekly win-loss column suggests.
Longmuir took over as senior coach at the end of 2019, stepping into a role that had chewed through expectations. His predecessor, Ross Lyon, had defined an era with a defensive, grinding style that took Fremantle to a grand final but never quite delivered a premiership. The club needed change, but not the kind of change that throws everything away. Longmuir, a former Dockers defender and Collingwood assistant coach, was seen as a calm, analytical figure who could modernise the team’s approach without losing its competitive spine.
The challenge he faced was not just tactical. Fremantle has always existed in a strange middle ground: too proud to accept mediocrity, too far from the football heartland to demand constant attention. Success at the club has often been built on resilience rather than star power. Longmuir’s task was to convince a young list — and a supporter base tired of near-misses — that the next step required patience, not panic.
His early seasons reflected that tension. There were games where the Dockers looked capable of challenging anyone, with a defensive structure that choked opposition ball movement and a midfield built around Andrew Brayshaw and Caleb Serong. There were also games where the forward line struggled to convert pressure into scoreboard impact, a recurring problem that fans grew tired of watching. By 2022, Fremantle made a finals appearance and won an elimination final, which seemed to validate the direction. A year later, the team slipped backward, and the same questions returned: could Longmuir actually coach a team that could score enough to win big games?
That question is fair, but it also misses what Longmuir has consistently tried to do. His coaching philosophy is not built on quick fixes. He emphasises system over individualism, team defence over flashy offence, and development over immediate reward. That approach can look uninspiring when the goals do not come, but it has produced a core of players who understand their roles deeply. The issue has never been effort; it has been execution in the forward half, and that is the hardest part of team building to accelerate.
If there is a criticism to be made, it is that Fremantle sometimes plays with the handbrake on. Longmuir’s teams rarely get blown out, but they also rarely blow opponents away. In a league that increasingly rewards risk and transition speed, the Dockers can appear methodical to a fault. Whether that is a tactical limitation or a necessary stage of growth depends on how you read the list’s maturity. The best coaches adjust their systems to their players, and Longmuir has been given enough time to show whether the system can evolve.
The club’s decision to extend his contract through 2025 was an acknowledgment that stability has value. Fremantle has not been a destination club for established stars; it has had to build from the draft and develop talent internally. That process is slow and uneven. Longmuir’s calmness, which can read as passivity on television, is actually a trait that works in a long rebuild. The danger is that calmness becomes comfort with being competitive rather than chasing a premiership.
That is the real test now. Fremantle does not need to become a completely different team overnight. It needs to find a way to turn its structured, contested style into more scoreboard pressure. Longmuir has shown he can build a defensive identity and develop young players. What he has not yet shown, and what the next two seasons will reveal, is whether he can push a team from “hard to play against” to “impossible to stop.” The difference is not just game plan; it is ambition.
For a club that has spent decades waiting for its first premiership, patience is both a virtue and a burden. Justin Longmuir has been given the rare opportunity to fail slowly, learn, and adjust without the sack. The question now is whether that patience will produce something Fremantle has never had — a team that believes it can win it all, not just compete with those who do.