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It’s been a strange week for the Fremantle Dockers. Really, it’s been a strange season, but this past week has opened up a host of new questions about the club and where it is heading.
Early last week Peter Sumich officially resigned his position at the club, effective immediately – a very rare move for an assistant coach to make, though Bulldogs assistant Brett Montgomery made the same move just a few days later.
Sumich is one of the Dockers’ longest-serving assistants and has been regularly touted as a future AFL senior coach – he was one of the frontrunners for the position at West Coast that was eventually filled by Adam Simpson.
Then late last week the news broke that Hayden Ballantyne was looking for a trade out of the club with his ideal destination being the Dockers’ crosstown rivals, West Coast.
As I said in the article linked above, “There hasn’t been a stated reason but you’d have to guess there’s been some kind of falling out between Ballantyne and the Dockers. His desire to stay in WA if possible suggests it isn’t some other aspect of his life that is problematic, but rather his relationship with the club.”
Ross Lyon added some fuel to the fire of that speculation in his press conference following last night’s 72-point loss to the Adelaide Crows. When asked if there was unrest among his playing group, Lyon said “I’m not sure, it’s clearly some loud minorities around the traps.”
Inscrutable as ever, Lyon didn’t give a clear answer when pressed as to exactly what he meant, simply saying: “I don’t think it’s a majority… it’s pass the parcel, really.”
Lyon denied categorically that Ballantyne had approached him to request a trade, but did confirm that Ballantyne had asked him previously about a three-year contract, to which Lyon says he responded: “I can’t help you, that’s between the list manager and yourself and your manager.”
The news also came through on Sunday night that Dockers president Steve Harris will step down from his position. Lyon said the news was “no surprise” and “not a shock to anybody”, but the timing of the announcement does seem conspicuously strange.
So what’s concrete here? Not much. It seems fairly clear that Ballantyne is, as reported, looking for a trade, and if a falling out with the club is the reason for that, then he might not be alone in it.
It’s noticeable that a number of Fremantle players are yet to sign with the club beyond 2016 and that includes the likes of Michael Barlow, Chris Mayne, Zac Clarke, Anthony Morabito, Clancee Pearce, Matt de Boer, Tendai Mzungu and Alex Silvagni.
That list includes some of Fremantle’s most regular players over the past few years, a time in which they’ve regularly appeared in finals, culminating in a grand final appearance in 2013 and minor premiership in 2015.
But given how the Dockers have dropped off this year – sitting in 16th on the ladder with a 3-17 record – Lyon has taken on a clear policy of rebuilding and trying to blood young talent in the team, a challenge he said he sees as “a real opportunity” for players that are willing to “dig in”.
However Lyon’s rebuild vision might not include a spot for those Docker veterans and it’s not hard to see where some unrest among the playing group might be coming from, if it does indeed exist. Are the departures of Sumich and Harris connected to this? Perhaps they are – or maybe they’re just really bad timing.
The whole situation feels uncannily familiar to the closing days of Brendan McCartney’s tenure as senior coach at the Western Bulldogs, an affair which famously exploded when then-Bulldogs-captain Ryan Griffen asked to be traded to the GWS Giants.
That off-season also saw the Bulldogs lose experienced veteran players in Adam Cooney and Shaun Higgins, as well as Liam Jones and Jason Tutt. McCartney resigned his position as a result of Griffen’s departure, and the rest is history.
So does a similar detonation await the Dockers? It’s impossible to say right now, but it seems pretty clear from the lay of the land that something is going on that we’re not being made fully aware of.
Whatever that is, it will surely come to light before long, and the steps that Fremantle take when it does may define the next era of the club, as they did for the Bulldogs two years ago.