Michael Walters: Why I’m backing my Fremantle Dockers teammates to break bye streak against North Melbourne

The next three games feel huge for us at Fremantle. Three consecutive games for us at Optus Stadium. Three chances for us to show exactly where we are at and set us up for the rest of the year. All three are against lower-placed teams on the ladder, but we aren’t taking any of them lightly. We’ve got North Melbourne at home on Saturday in what is technically an away game, before Essendon and St Kilda, who we lost to on the road earlier in the year. We had brilliant momentum heading into our bye and I can tell you our preparation for this first game coming back from a week off has been solid. We’ve followed all our usual processes. It’s no secret coming off the bye can be tricky for teams — there’s even some who call the mid-season week off a curse. For us, the bye hasn’t been our friend recently. We’ve actually lost our past three games coming off the bye, but have had a pretty decent record prior to that. In my opinion, it all comes down to this preparation. It’s not letting anything change in the minor areas that can influence and impact the way you play — easier said than done when you have two weeks off between games. Our main messaging this week has been winning each day — making every drill out on the track count, sticking to our plan and making sure we as a team are predictable to each other. It’s all about that consistency and we will nail it. Consistency is so important in football, so important that I wrote a whole column about it a few weeks back. We don’t want flashy footy that’s played in patches. We want to play out four quarters of consistent footy and no doubt we will. I’m feeling really good this week and have felt even better out on the track. I’m excited to be back playing footy this week, even though it won’t be against the Roos with my Freo boys. Instead, I’ll be playing some minutes in the WAFL for Peel. I’ve managed to get into some full training with the group over the last two to three weeks and — after not playing at all since the Indigenous All Stars pre-season match — it feels bloody good to be able to put my hand up for selection. For me personally, I love playing some WAFL footy. I get to be out there with the Peel boys, getting a close look at some of our future Dockers stars. The types of players that in a decade I’ll be bragging to people that I got to play alongside. And same goes for our opponents too. We’ll be coming up against West Coast for the WAFL derby and playing against some of the stars they have coming through. I’m a massive footy fan so I enjoy seeing this generation of West Australian players come through and going up against them in the competition. Just to be back playing is such a good feeling. I’m backing myself to be in good nick, although I’ll probably come off once or twice a quarter throughout the game to make sure I don’t try and come back too hard too quickly. These last 15-16 weeks of rehab have been tough, I didn’t want to be out too long because I want to enjoy the footy I’ve got left in me, being at the latter end of my career. So it’s going to be a big weekend for me, I’m going to give it 100 per cent in the WAFL and then turn my attention to my Fremantle teammates on Saturday night, who I’ll hopefully be playing alongside soon. I back the boys in to get it done, I’m feeling confident we are going to break that three game bye week losing streak and just focus and get on with playing some good footy and keeping the momentum we’ve got. Go Dockers. And go Peel.