Lisa Webb - Fremantle Dockers AFLW Coach (14.10.2026)

Mark Duffield (0:00)

Welcome back to the SENWA studio out here at Optus Stadium. Well, the two words that apply this weekend for Lisa Webb's Fremantle Dockers AFLW team must win. They come up against St Kilda at the Coburn Arc, and they need to get it done to stay in touch with the top eight. Lisa Webb joins us on the show now. Lisa, welcome.

Lisa Webb (0:23)

Thanks for having me.

Mark Duffield (0:24)

Now, it was a pretty brave effort, I thought, against North Melbourne and Arden Street last weekend, you didn't get the four points, and it leaves you out of the eight. What did you come out of the game thinking?

Lisa Webb (0:36)

Yeah, there's a bit to learn from it, clearly. I thought, you know, we played a really good first half. I thought the girls were really brave in the way that we took the game on. We were down early, clearly, 19 points, and we just backed in our system.

We got a couple of goals kicked on us early, the way that we probably knew that they would, so that was a bit disappointing. But after that, we kind of really locked in and took the game on. We moved the ball like we know we could. We defended the ground really well. We made in-game adjustments, which is credit to the way that the girls continue to grow and learn each week. Yeah, we threw some changes up there. We obviously had really done some playback for a little while as well. Leedon was important for us, and Turbo kept on doing Turbo things. So we had a lot of important moments in the game and which we didn't execute as well.

We left a few out there and I think, obviously losing by 28 points hurt, but I think we were out in the game for a long part.

Mark Duffield (1:38)

Yeah, I agree. You look like you came with a really clear plan.

You possessed the ball, you tried to kick through them, you worked for a while. It required a bit of a speech from their coach, Darren Crocker, I think at half time to tell them to read your moves a little bit better, which they did and they were able to turn the ball over a bit more after half time. But you must have been pleased with the way the girls stuck to the process you'd set for them.

Lisa Webb (2:06)

Absolutely. And at times when we've gone away from that, it's probably really shown. And that's what I'm most pleased about. Clearly, we went there to win the game and we didn't.

But there's a lot of growth that we can take out of it and a lot of positivity in the way that, yes, we moved the ball well. We executed in some moments early, obviously. And then, yeah, they just went up a gear, I guess, in that second half. And yeah, we struggled to stop them at some key moments, but we still had our chances as well. So yeah, it's something we can certainly build on. As I said, we're a team that's continuing to build and we need to keep building on those moments and take it forward into St Kilda this week.

Mark Duffield (2:43)

Just a couple of costly 50-meter penalties as well when you had field position at a critical time in the game in the third quarter. It enabled them to get out of their back 50 and really counterattack you?

Lisa Webb (2:56)

Yeah, and there are some of those key moments, whether we've got ball in hand or whether they do and we're not defending the ground like we would. Absolutely spot on. You can't be making mistakes like that. Or when we do have ball in hand and we don't adjust to the breeze and we take the ball for the lasso free kick, they're really difficult moments to give the ball back to a team like them because we know when they've got the ball and I know Crawford talked about it is they're hard to stop, they're really speedy, they've got skill all over the oval. We just need to make sure that we really pride ourselves on that possession because we worked really hard to get the ball back and when we did, we just needed to use a little better at times. But overall, proud of the way that we worked through it and stayed in it.

Obviously, we want to be getting the points to commit to finals.

Mark Duffield (3:45)

You mentioned Kiara Bowers earlier on in the interview. Her battle, I'm not sure that they were absolutely head-to-head, but I guess one versus the other, her against Ash Riddell, that was really quite a highlight of the game.