- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Fremantle’s rejigged midfield tactics have failed this season despite the dominance of Aaron Sandilands. Now they face trying to reignite their season, and their stoppage work, with a much weaker ruck division following his injury.
The Dockers this year have punted on a more aggressive, free-wheeling set-up at the ruck contests and it has backfired so far, seeing a massive increase in the amount of scores they’ve conceded from stoppages.
This bold strategic change clearly was an effort to become a more dynamic, potent and unpredictable side, having leaned for years on their defensive brilliance.
Will they now have to completely ditch this fresh approach in the wake of losing the ruck prowess of Sandilands? If their new tactics were coming unstuck even with the purple giant feeding their on-ballers, how ugly could it get with a far less gifted big man at the helm?
It was a brave move by the Dockers to move away from the well-oiled midfield set-up, which had taken them to a 17-5 regular season in 2015. They seem to have realised what many football fans had been arguing – that their defence-oriented game would keep them among the top teams but looked unlikely to propel them to a flag.
This seems even more pertinent now, given the hyper-offensive brand of football being pursued across the league. So Fremantle find themselves in a catch-22 situation.
By Sunday night, their premiership hopes could disappear. Right now, that looks more likely than not, with North Melbourne strong favourites to defeat the Dockers at Etihad Stadium.
Should last year’s minor premiers slump to 0-4 they will fall out of the flag race and be left to seriously consider a rebuild of some sort.
This is a side which has been studded with pivotal older players for several seasons now, and will face the Kangaroos without two of those veteran stars – Sandilands and skipper David Mundy.
Mundy is out for a couple of weeks with a calf injury, while Sandilands could be absent for about six weeks due to fractured ribs and a punctured lung suffered during the derby loss to West Coast.
While young gun Nat Fyfe may be the best footballer in the land, Sandilands remains arguably Fremantle’s most important player. Turning 34 years old this year, with 241 games in the bank, it’s remarkable that a footballer of his unprecedented size is still playing, let alone at such a high level.
This season may well be his last and Fremantle need to start preparing for post-Sandilands life, something which will be forced upon them over the next six weeks or so.
Reliable backup big man Jonathon Griffin is getting on himself, at 30 years old by the start of next season, so the ruck burden may well fall heavily upon Zac Clarke in the near future.
The word ‘promising’ long has been used in reference to Clarke and at the age of 26 he is entering what is typically the prime years for a ruckman. Yet he hasn’t convinced me of his credentials.
With his slight frame and complete absence of menace he looks far better suited to operating in the slipstream of the gigantic, intimidating Sandilands. Clarke’s agility and pace is impressive for a 203-centimetre footballer, but so it should be given he weighs only 96 kilograms.
After almost a decade in the AFL system, Clarke still has the body of a teenager. Compare his chassis to that of West Coast’s number one big man Nic Naitanui. Despite being two centimetres shorter than Clarke, Naitanui is a whopping nine kilogram heavier. In ball ups and boundary throw-ins he moves Clarke out of the way as if he were a mascot, not a direct opponent.
Most opposition ruckmen do just this to the skinny Docker, and also target him at the centre bounces, jumping early and into his body to exploit their greater bulk.
Clearly, Clarke has difficulty putting on muscle, so he will have to find a way to have an impact at the stoppages despite his frequent size disadvantages. He or Griffin have enormous roles to play over the next six weeks.
Right now, Fremantle’s gameplan is as messy as their record, and neither are likely to improve greatly if Griffin and Clarke underperform.