Fremantle defender Garrick Ibbotson says the Dockers are looking to again become first-quarter kings after the former fast-starters struggled to get going in games over the past two months.
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Top-of-the-table Fremantle won its first opening term since round eight when it kicked 6.2 to Carlton's 3.2 in round 16 at Domain Stadium on Saturday night.
In the six weeks the Dockers trailed at the first break, the round 10 home game against Richmond was their worst. The Tigers led 8.1 to 3.1 at quarter-time.
The two sides meet again on Saturday at the MCG and Ibbotson says Fremantle must be aware of the need to react when opposing sides jump out of the blocks.
The Dockers won seven consecutive first terms between rounds two and eight.
"It was a real strength of ours early in the season," he said.
"We do try and start really well every week. So it's not something we've been focussing on more or less as the year has gone on.
"We haven't been playing our best footy in the last sort of month or so. But on the weekend we sort of took a step in the right direction I think.
"We're obviously going to be trying to start as well as we can all the time. So it's not really a focus this week compared to others."
The Tigers had 4.0 on the board just 10 minutes into their round 10, 27-point win over Fremantle.
By that time, Ty Vickery and Ben Griffiths had taken marks inside 50 and kicked goals, with the other two coming in general play. Trent Cotchin could have made the margin even bigger, but passed off instead of taking his set shot and had his kick picked off.
The quarter-time margin was 30 points, but after kicking 8.0 to 1.0 after 20 minutes of the start of the game, the Tigers led by 42 points and the game was basically over.
Four of those goals came from set shots after players had taken marks; and importantly four of the eight came from the boot of Vickery and Griffiths - their two tallest attackers. Jack Riewoldt didn't hit the scoreboard until the second term, when he kicked two.
"They obviously started really well; I think they kicked six [actually - eight] goals straight, unanswered, so that's something we probably want to try and stop," Ibbotson said.
"We can't have sides kicking that many goals, the way they did. We sort of talk about the importance of first quarters and how they set up a game for you, so that's probably something we'll need to focus on, making sure we have a really strong first quarter and set us up from there.
"To come out and kick [goals] like that it put us on the back foot a little and we need to make sure if that was to happen again, that we can arrest that momentum.
"If we can get our hands on the ball and try and hold it for a little while and keep the ball off them and sort of stem the flow and sort of playing some good footy."
Fremantle could drop to second on the ladder with another loss this weekend – which would be a third defeat in seven rounds.
The Tigers can push into the four if they can win and West Coast can knock off Sydney.
