Fremantle Dockers captain Alex Pearce admits chipping style of play cost them against St Kilda Saints

Fremantle captain Alex Pearce has declared the team’s conservative approach with the ball gave the forwards little chance to compete during Sunday’s loss to St Kilda. Pearce said everyone needs to be more bold when they have opportunities to attack this season. The Dockers are reeling after a shock 15-point loss to St Kilda and fell into the trap of chipping the ball around the half-back line which allowed St Kilda’s defenders to flood back. The slow ball movement led to Fremantle kicking only seven goals from 65 inside-50s and Pearce said they had to play with more intent. “We’ll review the way we move the ball. We’d like to move the ball a little bit quicker than that and give our forwards a bit more of a chance,” Pearce told The West Australian. “A lot of times our inside-50s went to a crowded forward line which you want as a defence. You want numbers in there to make it hard to score. They were able to look dangerous moving forward because they moved it quicker and we were a bit slow. “The plan with the ball movement is to take what they give us. They fold numbers back behind the ball so we wanted to be able to use our frees. “We did at times but when you do that, you’ve got to be able to take ground as well. We got caught switching and not taking ground. We didn’t move the ball quick enough early off turnover. “We’d like to move the ball quick and go straight back at them. We had more possessions than them but got caught chipping around.” Fremantle’s 136 marks was the most of any team in round one, and 43 more than the average for the other 17 clubs. Only eight of those were taken inside 50, the same number as St Kilda had from their 87 marks. The defensive chipping was evident as Brennan Cox finished the game with 20 marks, Hayden Young and Luke Ryan took 13 each while Jordan Clark had 11. Pearce said the team failed to execute the plans they discussed coming into the match. “We spoke about how from the word go we didn’t play the way we wanted to and were sloppy on all facets,” he said. “There were moments we started to play our way, be able to move the ball and be able defend but couldn’t sustain it. It’s very disappointing.”