Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir has revealed he kept his tactics pretty "vanilla" in Saturday's loss to the Indigenous All Stars in a bid to keep AFL rivals in the dark.
The Dockers were swept aside 16.12 (108) to 9.11 (65) by the best-of-the-best Indigenous talent, with Bobby Hill (four goals), Jason Horne-Francis (three goals) and Jy Simpkin (30 disposals, 10 clearances, one goal) tearing Fremantle to shreds on Saturday.
Not that Longmuir seemed worried by the heavy defeat.
For not only were Fremantle without the likes of Sean Darcy, Hayden Young, Michael Walters, Shai Bolton, Alex Pearce, Nat Fyfe and Luke Ryan, but Longmuir also revealed he kept plenty of tactical aces up his sleeve.
"We played it pretty vanilla," Longmuir said.
"It's interesting, because all the other teams will get the vision and be able to watch it behind the goals.
"So we tried to keep it pretty vanilla, and we'll work on bits and pieces next week, and we've got match sim and that vision is not released.
"At this time of the year, we're trying to just make sure we get the basics right, and we didn't want to expose some of the things we've been working on.
"I know when we do our match sim 18 on 18, no-one gets the vision.
"We've been working on few things in that space. We didn't give too many teams a look at it today."
Fremantle have concerns over the fitness of small forward Sam Switkowski, who suffered a suspected concussion in the opening quarter of the All Stars match.
Switkowski has a history of concussions, and he missed three weeks last season with the issue.
"There's always a concern," Longmuir said.
"But he was sitting on the bench, and every time I asked him how he's going, he pushed me away and said he was fine."
Dockers defender Brandon Walker broke his nose and copped a knock to his knee late, but isn't expected to be in doubt for the start of the season.
Star recruit Shai Bolton (calf) and veteran Michael Walters (knee) made it through a full half for the Indigenous All Stars in a promising sign for their pre-season builds.
