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Could there be a bigger waste of time or space than any debate around Fremantle resting players in the upcoming Round 23?
The answer is of course yes, which is a strange position to take given I’m going to write about it, but so it is. We can’t let these nonsensical debates continue.
Fremantle announced yesterday that they would be resting up to 11 of last round’s 22, managing soreness and fatigue among their player group.
Eight Dockers have played every match this year, and no bookie would give you odds on any of them getting on a plane to Adelaide this week. The eight are Aaron Sandilands, Lachie Neale, David Mundy, Stephen Hill, Michael Barlow, Danyle Pearce, Garrick Ibbotson and Nick Suban.
Chris Mayne has played ten matches in a row, and we know the physical presence he brings to the Freo forward line, averaging over six tackles a game in that time. He’s unlikely to play.
Matthew Pavlich has only missed one match, albeit being subbed out in two others. Surely he doesn’t go. Lee Spurr has only missed one match, which was in the first half of the season, and is one that logs big minutes in games.
That’s eleven players already, which is not including injury-prone veteran key defender Luke McPharlin, and Cam Sutcliffe, who dislocated his shoulder on the weekend.
The surprise isn’t how many players Fremantle will rest, but that it will only be 11.
The Fremantle Football Club has a finite amount of players on their list. They are entitled to pick any 22 of them to represent the club, under any circumstances they like, in any configuration they wish.
The rest is just nonsense. Don’t give me any rubbish about integrity of the game, or manipulating ladder positions.
Ross Lyon’s job is to win Fremantle a premiership. He believes the best way of doing that is to finish on top of the ladder, more than a game clear of second place, and then rest players in the last home-and-away match to keep them fresh for their first final.
If I’m a Docker fan, I’m backing him in to do exactly that, regardless of location or opposition.
There has been some talk about Peel Thunder, Fremantle’s connector club in the WAFL, and how they’re going to be playing their first final this weekend, but will now have almost no chance to win it.
Well, for supporters of Peel, and the players and officials involved….we don’t get everything we want in this world, and sometimes life just isn’t fair. Tough.
As for supporters of other AFL clubs, you just need your team to get better, so they can be in a position to make the same moves. The more you win, the more rewards there are, as it should be. When it comes to winning, rarely do the ends not justify the means.
For Ross Lyon and the Dockers, this means having the best 22 players they can put out on the field in the first final, in the best possible condition they can be.
How they do it is entirely up to them.