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Fremantle coach Ross Lyon says there’ll be no witch hunt over who was to blame for Hawthorn fullback Brian Lake getting off the chain in the last quarter of Saturday’s AFL grand final.
The veteran Lake, a 31-year-old former Western Bulldogs’ All-Australian defender in his first season with the Hawks, took three vital marks in the final term for a total of 10 and was awarded the Norm Smith Medal for best-afield after gathering 22 possessions.
Master coach Lyon was well aware of the dangers of allowing Lake to run loose and pick off intercept marks and he had plans in place.
“I know how it happened,” Lyon told his post-match media conference at the MCG.
“We had a structure in place that should have been adhered to and it wasn’t and we paid the penalty.
“Those guys know who they are. We’ve spoken about that already.
“But there’s no witch hunt. What’s the point?
“It’s about the discipline under pressure to do what we want.”
Fremantle’s poor return in front of goal, kicking 8.14 (62) to Hawthorn’s 11.11 (77), was also costly.
Hawthorn led 5.5 (35) to 1.6 (12) at halftime.
“That start will haunt us for a while and the missed opportunities will hurt us,” Lyon said.
“I’d be disappointed if we didn’t handle it (pressure), but on the surface we didn’t execute with the aplomb that we can and should have.”
Tagger Ryan Crowley kept Hawthorn’s midfield star Sam Mitchell to just 12 disposals but the pre-game hype about Fremantle’s defensive pressure across all positions did not meet expectations.
Nathan Fyfe in the first quarter and Hayden Ballantyne in the final term blew a couple of scoring opportunities each and both finished without a goal.
The boot was on the other foot.
“We knew that we were a good pressure side ourselves so we were quite happy with everyone talking about it,” Hawthorn defender Josh Gibson said.
“We knew what we needed to bring and we felt we had been doing that all year against quality opposition and we were able to do that today.”
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