Danielle Laidley - The West Australian (10.06.2026)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Mark Duffield** (0:25)
Welcome back to the SE&WA studio out here at Optus Stadium on this Wednesday morning in Perth. Well, Danielle Laidley played and coached 300 AFL games. Of course, she was a Premiership player with North Melbourne in 1996, which means we've got a lot to talk to Danielle about today. There's the game last weekend between Fremantle and North, and there's the game coming up this weekend between North and West Coast. So, Danielle joins us on the show now. Welcome, Danny.

**Danielle Laidley** (0:56)
Good morning, Duff.

**Mark Duffield** (0:59)
Fremantle is going well, but how much can we read into the win over North last weekend, do you think?

**Danielle Laidley** (1:07)
I think quite a lot. Let's even put North Melbourne aside for one minute.
It was the execution over, I read somewhere that just Longmule put 119.5 minutes of football. And I think that's the big kick out of the game. Don't worry about the opposition. It was how that they, from the first bounce to the last bounce, you know, they just punished the opposition. And, you know, if you're a free male supporter, that is very good to see.

**Mark Duffield** (1:54)
Now, they're now three and a half games clear of the third place team on the ladder, Danny. When, if at all, do you start managing players if you're, if you're Justin Longmure with a view to basically trying to have people fresh and available come finals time?

**Danielle Laidley** (2:13)
Yeah, well, if you have a look at, so Caleb Sirong's basically had his rest and Hayden Young's only played, I think, six games.

**Mark Duffield** (2:25)
Yeah.

**Danielle Laidley** (2:27)
If you look at it from the engine room, let's say, you know, and Matt Johnson, who's been a very valuable player to them, will miss some games now. It's really, you would look at, perhaps, Andrew Brashear, who never misses games of football, always plays to the last siren. Shea Bolton plays lots of minutes all the time. And, you know, perhaps even a Murphy Reed, that they can look to. Now, whether they rest them for a whole game, and you can include Luke Jackson in that, particularly given when Sean Darcy is fit and ready. Perhaps they can play Darcy and Cox and rest Jackson, or they might even do it in game, where for a week or two, they might play them instead of at 85%, they play them at 60%.
So there's lots of ways that they can do it, and for some players, through injury this year, that's already taking place.

**Mark Duffield** (3:40)
I was wondering about this, and I've got a theory on this with Sean Darcy as he returns, and fingers crossed he gets back to somewhere approaching his best. And we've watched Mason Cox, and in most games he's done a pretty good job in support to Luke Jackson, but is the fact that Sean Darcy would be able to take more ruck time as opposed to Mason Cox, is that likely to be a fact in his favour as freeman works out who's the guy that plays alongside Luke? Just thinking that in terms of what you're talking about, perhaps managing Luke in game, that they would be able to more comfortably do that if Sean Darcy was the backup.

**Danielle Laidley** (4:20)
Yeah, and if you look at the games they played in the last stretch of last year, you know, Jackson would start in the ruck and he would do a lot of minutes early. And then in the middle part of the game, it looked like Sean Darcy, when he was fit, was doing a lot of ruck. So that allowed Jackson to play forward or get into a midfield rotation. And then Jackson seemed to come back late and then really just overrun and over all the opposite of ruckmen. So, that's, we've seen that when Sean D'Arcy is adding his, you know, fitness levels, you know, so that could possibly be the case. But then you can look at that Luke Jackson now is third in the coaches' votes.
And if he continues this form, it will be interesting Brownlow nightly.

**Mark Duffield** (5:34)
Absolutely. I mean, historically, Ruckman, well, historically, it's just a midfielder's medal, isn't it? But Luke Jackson, more than any other Ruckman, we've seen probably in recent times, is a midfielder who rucks as opposed to just a pure Ruckman in the Max Gorn mould. So that, you're right, it's going to be fascinating to see whether Gumpires pick him up and run with him.