Adam Simpson backs Fremantle Dockers to recover from round one shocker as David King blasts Justin Longmuir

Former West Coast coach Adam Simpson believes Fremantle can recover from their poor start as the fallout continues from their 78-point Geelong drubbing.

The Dockers were seen as serious contenders for the premiership ahead of round one, but were a long way off the pace against the Cats in an abject display on Saturday.

Despite the team recording their biggest-ever loss under Justin Longmuir, his former Eagles rival doesn’t believe the alarm bells should be ringing just yet.

“I think they’re gonna be fine Fremantle, others might disagree but I think that was just a bad day, but they’ll fix that,” Simpson said on SEN.

“I’ve seen too much evidence to suggest they can’t turn it around.”

However, Simpson did note a regression in their game style at the weekend, one which he thought the Dockers had stamped out.

“The one thing I did see is the overuse of handball,” he said.

“It’s something I noticed a while ago, when we used to play Fremantle the only thing I used to talk about was to bring pressure and they’ll feed the ball backwards and then you steamroll.

“That was the backend of Ross’ time and a little bit more of Longmuir’s time, but that went away a couple of years ago, they got too good at it, but on the weekend the pressure Geelong brought saw them revert to that.”

The Dockers laid off 178 handballs, 65 more than their opponents, and coughed up 65 turnovers while only managing 55 marks - half as many as Geelong.

North Melbourne great David King said the blame laid squarely at the feet of Longmuir.

“By his own admission, Justin Longmuir said he didn’t prepare his team for this battle,” he said on SEN

“They weren’t ready for (Oliver) Dempsey taking wings into the square, they weren’t organised behind the ball.

“They got assaulted by Bailey Smith for 120 minutes and did nothing about it.”

King said their strategy and the science behind their football program is the Dockers’ biggest roadblock to flag success.

“This is top-line AFL footy, strategy needs to be at the absolute pointy end to beat a team like Geelong in Geelong,” he said.

“They were miles off it, they weren’t ready for what came at them.

“These are real challenges they will have to front up too.”