Fremantle are banking on the continued emergence of their young brigade to again crash and bash their way into the AFL's top eight.

Although the Dockers are staying tight-lipped about their expectations for season 2011, skipper Matthew Pavlich believes there is no ceiling on what the fledgling squad could achieve after their shock semi-final appearance last year.

Young players such as Nat Fyfe, Hayden Ballantyne, Anthony Morabito, Alex Silvagni, Greg Broughton, Michael Barlow, Nic Suban, Stephen Hill and Matt de Boer played a crucial role last year, helping the Dockers become a major force in the competition.

Although Morabito will miss the coming season due to a knee injury and Barlow's return date from a broken leg is still an unknown, Pavlich hopes there's more than enough youngsters to fill the void.

"You probably just happened to see a photo with 33 young guys in the development group which spans from one to four years," Pavlich said at Fremantle's team photo shoot on Thursday.

"So we've got a vast majority of our playing group in the early parts of their career still.

"So yes certainly the large majority of our squad will be filled with young players again."

Despite last year's unexpected success, Pavlich refused to set a benchmark for the team this season.

"We can't have anything to do with the external expectations or pressures that are put on us," Pavlich said.

"Internally we expect a whole heap about how we behave and how we train and all our methods and all our planning - we expect a lot from the guys.

"But externally you won't be hearing anything from us about bold expectations or anything like that.

"It's about improving together as a group, it's about developing further and seeing how far we can go.

"There's no ceiling on what we can do, but we're hopeful that with our general improvement of our younger players, we can have another strong year."

Pavlich said Barlow was tracking along wellfrom his broken leg and hoped fans would understand the 23-year-old may not be able to immediately repeat his heroics from the early part of last year.

"I think our fans are pretty intelligent in that once someone has a severe injury, they don't expect too much," Pavlich said.

"Michael's no different from Rhys (Palmer) or from Anthony Morabito or from any of our players who have had serious knee injuries.

"Tim Ruffles is another one who's gone through a second knee (reconstruction).

"The AFL is a severe competition, it's hectic, there's a huge amount of workload going through players so they won't be expecting a huge amount from Michael.

"We just want him out there at some stage and we are confident he'll be there ... early in the season."

Pavlich predicted he would play predominantly in the forward line this year but said he was happy to again spend short stints in the midfield when the team required his presence.

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