Fremantle intend to make St Kilda teenager Ben McEvoy's AFL debut memorable for all the wrong reasons, confident they can exploit him in Friday night's clash at Telstra Dome.

Coach Mark Harvey believes injuries to the Saints' ruck brigade have left them vulnerable to one of the Dockers' biggest weapons, their giant ruck duo of 211cm Aaron Sandilands and 206cm youngster Robert Warnock.

McEvoy, 18, will be given his chance to take them on, after the Saints' Michael Gardiner (hamstring) joined Justin Koschitzke (knee) on the sidelines.

But Harvey made it clear the Dockers would be going out of their way to put pressure on the newcomer, who will play a support role to veteran Saints' ruckman Steven King.

"He'll know he plays his first game," the Fremantle coach said.

"We've got Warnock and Sandilands and they're starting to really evolve in the area that you're talking about.

"That's where we can get an advantage, from stoppages, and exploit St Kilda in that manner."

Harvey said the Dockers would take a different mindset into the match as a result of notching their first win in nine rounds, over North Melbourne last weekend.

The 53-point victory came after a string of morale-sapping narrow losses, the last seven by an average margin of 12 points.

"It just makes a lot of difference to the group," Harvey said.

"When you talk about confidence sometimes that can flow on into games.

"Your players tend to run with a bit more freedom and relax a bit more than perhaps they would if they were still going down the path that we were.

"So there's a bit of that and sometimes you can be a lot more decisive after winning."

Their next target is to pick up a win away from Subiaco Oval, the location of their only two victories so far this season.

Encouragingly for Harvey, they have been competitive in all five of their games outside Perth so far, their biggest loss by 26 points to Collingwood in round one.

"We've set ourselves to win a couple of games on the road from hereon in, so this is one of them tomorrow night," Harvey said.

"It will be an interesting game for many reasons, I guess.

"They've obviously set themselves for the finals, St Kilda, and hopefully we can dismantle that."

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