FREMANTLE coach Justin Longmuir says good luck to any teams that try to blunt the Dockers' forward line weapons by flooding numbers back, with the coach not expecting other clubs to mimic the Western Bulldogs' approach on Friday night. 

The Bulldogs played with large numbers in their back half at Optus Stadium in a style that kept the game tight for three quarters, but it couldn't last the distance as Fremantle broke the game open in the final term to win by 37 points. 

DOCKERS v BULLDOGS Full match details and stats

It was a different challenge for the Dockers, but Longmuir said they had expected the tactics and were always confident the dam wall would eventually break if they persisted on Friday night. 

Asked if he expected other teams to follow the Bulldogs' lead in the run to September, Longmuir simply said "good luck". 

"They threw something different at us (and) we persisted well and understood that that's the way they're probably defending a little bit more now," Longmuir said on Friday night. 

"They get numbers back and they hold their numbers. 

"They've got a few players out, especially in their front half and they've probably got a couple of issues down back with their size as well … so I think it's probably more circumstantial for them. 

"I don't think we'll face that sort of look in the finals.

"We have faced teams doing slightly different things, but maybe some of the top sides won't do that."

Longmuir said it was a mature performance from his team, which problem-solved on the run after a tight first half and kicked seven goals to one following the main break to win a club record 18th game this season. 

Their final score of 78 points was their lowest at home this season, but the match provided more evidence that the team can win in several different ways when needed.  

"It's another great experience for us. We've been kicking over 100 points here, and today it was hard to score," Longmuir said. 

"They kept the scoreboard pretty even up until halfway through the third, so I was proud of the way the players worked their way through that. 

"The growth in our maturity across the course of the last 18 months is we haven't panicked when we've been in those games and in those situations. 

"We've just kept our head, kept playing, kept problem solving, and kept working our way through the situations that the opposition have thrown at us, and usually we've come out on top." 

Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said his team had not set out to flood numbers into its back half, with Fremantle's ability to control field position the reason the game looked the way it did. 

While the Bulldogs enjoyed periods on top in the midfield and competed at the contest, skill errors and an inability to consistently move the ball from their back half had proved costly. 

"We didn't plan to play like that. I mean, we've been a pretty reasonable team defensively in recent times," Beveridge said. 

"We'll get numbers in there, but they still scored from their forward 50 stoppages, so it wasn't by design that we had saturation and numbers behind the ball. 

"We came here tonight to win the game, not to be safe, not eliminate risk, but we didn't execute well enough. 

"We had momentum opportunities, but we fumbled the ball, or we mucked up gilt-edge chances, and we fuelled Fremantle's game."

Beveridge said important forwards Aaron Naughton and Cody Weightman had been sore on a short break, but he couldn't guarantee their availability for next Thursday night's clash against North Melbourne. 

"It definitely wasn't a conservative thing where you're looking after them because you're worried about the next week. Why would you do that against the top team?" he said.  

"We definitely didn't want to concede … we came here based off last time we played them, being in the game, sniffing out a victory. So we definitely didn't rest them because we felt it was any sort of free hit where we give someone else a chance. 

"I hope they're available on Thursday, but I can't tell you whether they will be."