Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir is preparing his ladder-leading side for a western derby scrap against West Coast, after their cross-town rivals declared they’re hunting a “scalp” on Friday night.

The Dockers (16-2) have dominated this season to sit three games clear at the top of the ladder and on track to claim the minor premiership, while the Eagles (4-14) have been more competitive without much reward in the win-loss column.

Eagles coach Andrew McQualter said on Sunday his young side will throw everything at the flag favourites in a bid to cause what would be one of the upsets of the year.

“We’re trying to get a scalp, so our aim is we’ll scout, we’ll do all the work on Freo,” he said.

“They’ve obviously had a good year so far, but we’re going to try to beat them.”

Longmuir responded on Tuesday, adding that he challenged his players to match the energy of West Coast’s young side.

“You don’t sneak under anyone’s radar when you’re where we are on the ladder. So we spoke about that and spoke about the need to make sure we match teams, especially early,” Longmuir said.

“They (West Coast) have already said that they want to come out and take a scalp.

“So we’ve read that into their mindset and we’ll prepare for their best and go out there and try and improve our footy.

“We need to understand that teams are going to be really physical against us and not give us what we want, so there’s nothing wrong with making it a scrap at times. We’ve just got to embrace that part of the game.

“We’ve got to expect their best, and they’re going to bring their best.”

Longmuir has urged his players to focus on constantly improving, saying they can’t expect their current form to be enough to keep winning later in the season.

“I’ve said to the players over the last month that we need to keep improving at a faster rate than the teams below us, and the rest will look after itself,” he said.

“We’ve got a young group who are still searching for their best as individuals. So if we all improve as individuals, then we’ll improve as a team. We’ve been really diligent with that. We’ve got a lot of growth left in us, so it’s exciting.”

Longmuir is confident he knows the answer to the team’s recent issues at clearances, saying the way they recovered during the win over Port Adelaide showed it was “an easy fix.”

The Dockers trailed Port Adelaide 13-23 in clearances at half-time on Saturday and that included a horrible 2-12 result in centre clearances.

That effort followed them losing the clearances 24-36 to Gold Coast and 28-42 against Greater Western Sydney.

Fremantle won the clearances in the second half against the Power to finish that battle 36-36 and Longmuir said that showed they already understood what had been going wrong.

“It’s a pretty easy fix, to be honest,” Longmuir explained.

“Centre bounce is a little bit more difficult, but some of our ball handling contributed to it. There were times when we handballed straight to them and turned it over within the stoppage, especially at centre bounce. Then we just had a few issues with the way we were setting up the stoppage.

“They rectified that in the second half, and we were plus-10 clearance in the second half. One of the inconsistencies is our stoppage work and the way we set up a stoppage. So, we need to have a bit more attention to detail with that.”