Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir has declared his team will continue to take giant strides as his stars build their match fitness after they produced a second half blitz to beat Richmond by 61 points in the Barosssa Valley.

Star ruckman Sean Darcy and Hayden Young played their first games for the year and had an impact while Shai Bolton kicked two goals and had more chances to hit the scoreboard against his former club after missing the start of the season.

The Dockers began the season below full strength and lost the opening two games to Geelong and Sydney. But they have now won three games in a row and will remain on the road for the week in preparation for Saturday’s match against Melbourne at the MCG.

Longmuir said he’s excited by what the team is building towards.

“Of course I am,” he said.

“ A little of an issue has been disruption at the start of the year. We had personnel coming in and out leading into practice matches and our intra club. Pearcey i don’t think played an intraclub. Sean hasn’t played. We’re building in that sense. We’re not at our best in terms of personnel just yet with Luke (Jackson) out of the team and a couple of others but it is starting to build.”

Having missed most of the pre-season with leg and hamstring injuries, Young kicked two goals from 18 disposals after playing for 69 per cent of the match. Darcy had 22 hit outs and nine disposals from 63 per cent game time.

The pair played in the WAFL last week to prepare them for a return to the AFL and Longmuir liked what he saw against the Tigers.

“I thought they were both very strong,” he said.

“Credit to our fitness staff to get them up off limited minutes in the WAFL to play the minutes we asked of them today. They both performed their roles. I thought Sean had good strength and good work around the ground. It’s harder to review Young’s game, but I thought some of his aerial work and some of his kicking was solid. I was happy with both of them.”

Fremantle recovered from a sloppy start where they trailed by 11 points to win 16.12 (108) to 7.5 (47) as Josh Treacy starred with six goals.

Longmuir revealed a spray at half-time led to the team kicking nine goals to one in the second half.

“A little bit of a tune-up at half-time on not focusing on what the scoreboard says but focusing on trying to implement our footy and our brand,” he said.

“We know that starts in the contest. I thought we were inconsistent in the contest in the first half. Led by our leaders, we were much more consistent in the contest in the second half.

“I thought 50-50 balls, we put our name on it. We owned the footy, which gave us territory and we defended our front half better than what we did in the first half and we were able to score off the back of those two things.

“It was a reminder. A few edits got shown and to their credit, they turned it around. They’re a group that want to be their best. At times, that needs to come out. We got it right in the second half.”