Lyon: Freo can stand up to Cats
Fremantle's senior coach says his team may not be perfect but they have the power to challenge the Cats
Fremantle’s senior coach, Ross Lyon, is looking forward to confronting the Cats with some ‘serious questions’ when they touch down at Simonds Stadium.
Lyon says Saturday’s battle, which will be a fight for a home preliminary final, will be a great opportunity for the Dockers to test the Cats on their home turf.
“We’re an elite pressured and defensive team and they’re an up-tempo high use and high possession team, so it’s a threat to us but also a wonderful opportunity,” Lyon told www.fremantlefc.com.au
“We’ll get asked some serious questions but we’re going to ask some serious questions of the Geelong Football team as well.
Despite how threatening the Cats can be at their Geelong fortress Lyon is confident the Dockers will step up to the challenge.
“For a long period of time now we’ve been able to stand up to pressure and I’m really confident that we’ll stand up again but talks cheap we need to get into action.”
As Lyon says it’s hard to predict who will outshine who until the final siren blows, however, he knows that the Dockers are in a good position and are ready for finals footy.
“My perception of us is that we’ve been in pretty good form, we haven’t been perfect and we’ve got some challenges obviously which every team has with injury but we certainly go in and we understand that we’ve got a big challenge.”
Lyon says the Cats main strengths have been their ability to defend and drive the ball forward.
“They're an elite defensive team, their ability to press and lock it in is elite,” Lyon said.
“They've been restricting teams to 38 (inside 50) entries, it gets a bit lost.”
However, Lyon says the Dockers have the skill set to match the Cats at their own game.
“I think we clearly are strong defensively, but our offensive side of the game has been really strong over the past five or six games,” he said.