Under pressure Chris Tarrant may have been dropped by the Dockers after suffering friendly fire from his own fans last week, but fellow misfiring forward Jeff Farmer also copped some heavy hits from his own side.

Fremantle coach Mark Harvey has gone out of his way to protect Tarrant after a slow start to the season, with boos from home fans during last weekend's thrashing by Richmond leading to a claim of a media campaign to drive the former Magpie out of town.

Tarrant did in fact leave Perth this week, allowed to return to Melbourne for family reasons, and was subsequently left out of the team named to take on Adelaide.

While that is likely to bring more scrutiny of the 27-year-old, assistant Dockers coach Peter German instead put the acid on Farmer, whose first four games of 2008 have averaged just over 13 possessions and one goal.

"He has not played well at all, to his standards," German said.

"He does not seem to have had that excitement, and for Jeff Farmer to play well he needs to be jumping around and really look excited about his football.

"I know Harves has addressed it with him, and spoken to him about it. There is pressure on him, and on other senior players to perform."

As promised, Harvey injected youth into his side with Marcus Drum and Clayton Hinkley in the team, and Brock O'Brien and Garrick Ibbotson named as emergencies.

German said the absence of Tarrant this week was something the club was comfortable with.

"This week would be (for) personal reasons but, whether he was going to miss for poor form, that was strongly debated in match committee," German said.

And with Brett Peake amongst five players omitted, and Josh Carr named on the interchange, German said reputations would count for nothing in coming weeks if the Dockers' form did not improve.

"There are a lot of players over the next months ... not so much their careers but where they are with their football we are going to have to analyse and they are going to have to analyse as well," German said.

"What you will find is if they don't have that determination and that attitude, they will be dropped from the side. It doesn't matter who it is.

"That is the most important thing we want to get over to the players.

"We are going to be ridiculed and put under scrutiny each week if we are not prepared to play with a real dogged determination - and the club is not going to move forward.

"If it means playing young players who may not have the experience but may have a harder edge, like Chris Mayne, then that is the path we will go down."

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