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This could be Fremantle’s season, the year in which it finally sheds a legacy of mediocrity and snares its first AFL flag.
But it also looms as the season after which its premiership window may slam shut. If they don’t raise the cup this year it could be a long wait for Dockers fans.
Fremantle’s spine is ageing and weary. Its three most important players – captain Matthew Pavlich, gun key defender Luke McPharlin and all-time great ruckman Aaron Sandilands – will almost certainly be past their best in 2014, if even they manage to take the field together at all.
Pavlich and McPharlin turn 33 next year and Sandilands will be 32. All three are key position players and such footballers rarely maintain their influence beyond age 30.
No one on the Dockers’ list could come close to replacing McPharlin or Pavlich, while back-up ruckman Jonathan Griffin lacks the same dominating presence as the 211cm Sandilands, who is sidelined for another five weeks with a severe hamstring injury.
There is a popular theory in WA that Griffin is as effective as the injured giant, who has missed 26 of his team’s last 53 games. This furphy serves only to ease the anxiety Dockers fans feel in his absence.
Ask any opposing team and its ruckmen which player they would rather encounter – Sandilands or Griffin – and they would likely not offer an answer assuming that the question was disingenuous.
Sandilands trails only West Coast’s Dean Cox as the AFL’s best big man of the past 20 years. Ruckmen of his ilk are priceless in finals football, when the number of stoppages typically increase as a result of the heightened desperation and defensive pressure.
The Dockers have a talented midfield capable of capitalising on the ascendency of Sandilands. David Mundy and Michael Barlow are two of the AFL’s most effective clearance players, while Nathan Fyfe and Stephen Hill provide the polish.
With Sandilands in the side, Fremantle’s midfield can compete with any outfit. Once they’ve won the ball in the centre those on-ballers can kick with confidence into a forward line which has become far more dangerous thanks to the emergence of Michael Walters.
The expert panellists on Channel Nine’s Sunday Footy Show this week agreed Walters was now the best small forward in the competition, having booted 19 majors in seven games this season to go with his fearsome tackling. He and fellow dynamo Hayden Ballantyne loiter at the foot of packs, hoovering up any spillages.
Once Pavlich returns from his Achilles injury, that pair should get even greater crumbing opportunities because Fremantle kick long inside 50m more often when he plays. Pavlich is as good as any big forward in the competition and combined with Walters and Ballantyne gives the Dockers sufficient firepower to win finals.
But they say it’s defence that wins you premierships. If that is the case then Fremantle are well placed, having conceded the second fewest points of any team this year. It also had the second tightest defence in 2012.
McPharlin is the cornerstone of this back six and will leave a huge void when his career ends, which cannot be far away. He marshals the Dockers defensive unit which has become watertight since Ross Lyon took over as coach last season.
Lyon is perhaps the Dockers ace when it comes to winning the flag. Although he is yet to lead a side to a premiership, he came achingly close with St Kilda in both 2009 and 2010. Blessed with tactical nous, Lyon implements a style of play which, while not necessarily attractive, flourishes in the cauldron of finals football.
Fremantle caught the entire competition off guard when it beat Geelong in last year’s elimination final. The tenacity and discipline it displayed that night have been hallmarks of its tight-checking play this season.
Pavlich, though, was the difference between the sides in that final with six goals.
It was a performance he is unlikely to be able to repeat beyond this year as age wearies his body and he loses some of the remarkable athleticism which has so often confounded opponents.
Pavlich’s side have gone 18 seasons without even coming close to a premiership. They now have a genuine chance of ending that era of underachievement. Should Fremantle finish top four – and they are in a reasonable position to do so – they will be a very difficult proposition for any side.
But there is a sizeable “if” missing from that claim. They will be a very difficult proposition for any side if Pavlich, Sandilands and McPharlin are all fit and firing.
Should the Dockers again fail to make the grand final, the only thing likely to keep them in the flag hunt in coming seasons would be the recruitment of key position stars Lance Franklin or Harry Taylor to compensate for the decline of its Big Three.
However, both Franklin and Taylor would be extremely difficult to acquire. So this is the Dockers’ season. It has to be.