Ballantyne's loss is Fremantle's gain

The Fremantle Dockers’ scoring woes are on the verge of counting them out. But they just got an unexpected fillip, with an injury to a woefully out of form small forward allowing us to test the theory of addition by subtraction.

Fremantle small forward Hayden Ballantyne is out for at least the rest of the AFL home-and-away season, with a torn pectoral muscle. History suggests it could be a longer lay off, and the bloke they call Ballas in the west may be done as a contributor to Fremantle’s finals campaign.

If you want the hottest of hot takes, here’s one: good.

I went all in on Fremantle’s finals chances before the season proper got underway, anointing the Dockers as a clear second favourite to the mob in brown and gold. It doesn’t sound like I stuck my neck out on the line now, but before the season the consensus was they’d slide. There were some commentators suggesting they might miss finals all together.

My thesis was centred on the busting of the AFL’s age equals decline fetish, and to this point it’s been proven correct – on the wins tally, anyway. But I did err with one prediction: that the forward set up of Matthew Pavlich, Chris Mayne, Michael Walters and Hayden Ballantyne, if fit and firing, would get coach Ross Lyon the extra two goals that eluded him in Fremantle’s 2013 season.

How’s that working out? Fremantle have recorded a raw offensive efficiency rating (OER) of 84.7 so far in 2015, down from the 90.7 recorded in 2013, and 91.5 in 2014. When adjusted for scoring across the league, the Dockers are almost exactly where they were forward of the ball during their grand final run.

But it’s not quite that simple.

In the first eight rounds of the year, the Dockers were the league’s fifth-ranked offence, putting up an OER of +11.5. When your defence is league-leading – which it was then, and still is now – that’s enough to get you a 100 per cent winning record. And so it was, with Fremantle streaking their way out to a two-game lead on top of the ladder one third of the way through the year.

Then the Dangerfyfe game happened. A mystical, whimsical affair, where two of the game’s best were told to ply their trade like the legends of yesteryear. It was wet, and low scoring, with Fremantle prevailing 68-57. That game will go down as one of the best of the year – Sunday’s Showdown wins though – but it marked a clear turning point in Fremantle’s season.

Since Round 9, Fremantle have collapsed to an OER of -15.2, ranked 15th in the league. That’s bottom four in an 18-team competition. The Dockers have won five more games, but with a percentage of almost exactly 100 which suggests good fortune has played a not insignificant role. Their defence has suffered too, but that’s as much a product of the draw as a drop off in efficiency. Michael Johnson’s injury hasn’t helped though.

So what’s this got to do with a 174-centimetre small forward? Put simply, Ballantyne has had a stinker of a year, and has been a liability for Fremantle forward of the ball.

It’s not all about goals these days. But for Ballantyne, it kind of is. Number one has kicked less than that many goals a game so far this year, ranking seventh at the club in 2015. His 0.8 goals per game is just one third of the 2.4 he put up in an All Australian year last year. He’s kicked less goals than practically every small forward in the competition so far.

His team mate, Walters, has had the opposite year, booting a team-leading 28 goals for the season after missing much of 2014 with injury. Walters has kicked three bags of four, three bags of three and missed the scoreboard just once (Round Five). Ballantyne has kicked two goals twice, and been goalless four times.

But as I say, it’s not all about goals. Ballantyne is an energy guy, known for chasing blokes like a greyhound pursuing a stuffed toy. Again, tackle count isn’t everything, and there’s a range of advanced stats like pressure acts and all that (but we don’t get them, #freethestats), but Ballantyne is averaging just over four tackles a game – barely scraping his way to 10th at the Dockers. His pressure counterpart, Mayne, is laying close to six a game.

It’s not all his fault, though. That he’s managed to keep his spot in the side despite a poor season output wise suggests there’s some intangibles. For one, he’s a legendary club man, a glue guy in every sense of the word. In a team full of silent contested ball killing machines, Ballantyne is the little siren that sounds to tell you the machines are switching on. He’s not one to shirk a challenge – a polite way of saying he’s aggressive.

There’s also a suggestion that Ballantyne is playing an explicit defensive forward role, tasked with keeping the opposition’s half-back line honest. When you watch the tape, it’s really clear that he’s playing much further up the ground than a traditional small forward, roaming around the 50-metre arc when Fremantle are looking to enter the zone, and joining in once there’s a stoppage.

His possession zone map – I refuse to call it a heat map – confirms he is spending more time up the ground than a typical small forward. This is a very different role from 2013 and 2014, where Ballantyne was one of the league’s most deadly fast break finishers, breaking defenders’ ankles like Steph Curry.

Could it be that Lyon’s tagging role has moved out of the midfield and into the forward line? It’s certainly possible. But it’s not particularly effective, in recent times at least. Ballantyne was very cosy with Hawthorn’s Grant Birchall in Round 15. He had 19 kicks.

So in both of his 2015 roles, Ballantyne looks to have missed the mark. Fremantle will miss his on-field energy, but otherwise his injury represents an opportunity to shake things up a bit.

The ‘who comes in’ question is quite straightforward: promising youngster Hayden Crozier will throw off the green shackles and start on the half forward line. Max Duffy has been performing well in the WAFL for Peel Thunder, but still looks a little raw for AFL football. This is assuming Matt de Boer retains his starting spot, which I think he will – if Lyon decides one week of tough love is enough for Clancee Pearce, Crozier may miss out.

None of those players, other than Duffy perhaps, have shown the nous for goal that Ballantyne has in the past, and so the Dockers may end up playing with one less permanent forward in what’s left of the year. That may work in their favour, with Lyon lamenting the lack of space granted to his key forward earlier in the year.

It most certainly ups the pressure on Mayne, who for all of his pressure acts hasn’t recaptured his golden boot form from 2012-13. Mayne plays much higher than a typical centre half forward, and has been playing much more through the middle of the ground as a bigger-bodied battering ram in congested situations. Expect that to change now Ballantyne is out.

These options don’t sound exciting. And let’s be honest, they’re not. Small structural tweaks, like playing Mayne as a more traditional centre half forward, might be worth some marginal gains in efficiency. Fremantle need much more than that if they’re to get their mojo back forward of the ball.

So you know how the Dockers have been the fourth-least efficient team in attack since Round 9? It hasn’t been to do with a drop in their midfield: Fremantle are entering their attacking zone just two times less per game now compared to their first eight games. They’re still breaking even or winning the clearance battle, even if it’s not quite as one-sided as it was earlier in the year.

No, it has everything to do with an unprecedented drop in their ability to convert those forward 50 entries to scores – from 47.8 per cent (one point above league average) in the first part of the season to 39.2 per cent in the second part. They have also seen their ridiculously outsized 58.6 per cent scoring accuracy revert to the mean, putting up a more meagre 50.4 per cent in the last seven games.

You know how Essendon are renowned for being terrible at converting? Well, ummm, Fremantle have been worse than the pitiful Bombers. Over this stretch of games at least.

Is there a solution? I think there is.

Play Nat Fyfe as a permanent forward.

Fyfe is a freak with the ball, and possibly even more of a freak without it. He is one of the league’s best contested marks, plucking just shy of two per game, which while no longer league-leading (as he was when I pioneered the Nat Fyfe quadrant on the occasion of his 100th game) is still far and away the most of anyone considered a midfielder.

He’s been down in recent weeks, likely a combination of form – hey, even freight trains need a rest every few hundred thousand miles – and negating tactics around the clinches. Fyfe has managed to crack 20 disposals each of the past three weeks, but he’s recorded just eight, nine and seven uncontested possessions respectively, suggesting he’s being harassed and cramped for space. His mark numbers have been down too.

During Fremantle’s scoring drought, Fremantle have maintained their dominance around stoppages despite Fyfe being responsible for less of their drive. He has gone from winning almost a quarter of Fremantle’s clearances in the first eight games to 19 per cent in the recent stretch, with Lachie Neale and David Mundy picking up their rating.

What I’m saying is, Fyfe’s influence on the ball has been diminished in recent weeks, but it’s been scarcely noticeable on the overall output of the team through the middle of the ground. Where the output has noticeably dropped is inside forward 50.

Why not roll the dice, and station Fyfe more permanently forward of the ball? His size and range commands a key defender, which would see Pavlich freed up more than he has been in 2015. Mayne could continue to play his rangy role, while being given the third defender when he’s inside forward 50.

Fyfe would remain a crucial player at centre bounces, but instead of following the ball leave that up to the likes of Mundy, Neale and C Pearce. Like Pavlich, Fyfe could pinch hit at clearances in the back half of the ground if he were to find himself there on transition, but he should shift his centre of gravity from the centre circle to the goal square.

It probably won’t happen on a sustained basis – Lyon is quite set in his ways, and when you’re a successful AFL coach you’ve earned the right to be stubborn with your system.

But swapping out Ballantyne with Fyfe might prove the principle of addition by subtraction, and save Fremantle’s fading chance at the game’s biggest prize.