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It’s going to be the debate of the week. You will hear it on TV, you will hear it on the street, you will hear it around the water cooler. Should Fremantle play Ryan Crowley in this week’s preliminary final?
It wasn’t so long ago that Crowley was a rather prominent and controversial player. The premier tagging player in the league, he drew praise from his coaches but attracted the ire of opposition midfielders like Gary Ablett Jr, who once lambasted him on Twitter for “playing the man”.
In 2012, Ross Lyon’s first year coaching the Dockers, Crowley was valued so highly that the was awarded the Doig Medal as Fremantle’s best and fairest. In 2013 there was talk of him deserving a spot in the All-Australian team on the quality of his tagging ability.
However, those days seem a lot longer ago now. Why? Because Crowley hasn’t played since the 2014 semi-final due to a year-long suspension for having taken a banned substance.
Not all the details of the case have been released but the story generally presented is that Crowley took a painkiller not prescribed by the club doctor, and it unfortunately happened to contain a banned substance.
A very, very dumb move but not necesarilly a reprehensible one. It didn’t cost Crowley the full two-year penalty but at the age of 31 a year out of the game is close to a career death sentence.
Heading into this week’s preliminary final, Crowley is for the first time in 12 months eligible to play football. So the question is, for this do-or-die clash preliminary final, will Crowley get a call up?
The case for
Let’s face it, Fremantle are in a spot of bother. While this is a home final for them, they haven’t been in great form in the lead-up and their opponents, Hawthorn, are fresh off a massive finals win.
Fremantle look like the first team in quite a while to enter a home preliminary final not as the favourites. They finished on top of the ladder, they took the Swans out in Week 1, they’ve had a rest – but they haven’t convinced anyone.
They need to roll the dice a bit here, because if they don’t make some big improvements to the footy they’ve played over the past few months very quickly, they are going to get slammed.
Crowley can help with that. They haven’t had a really effective tagger with him gone all year but his ability to really shut an opposition star out of the game could be just what the Dockers need to get their mojo back.
Sam Mitchell is the obvious choice for Crowley to go to. He is the Hawks’ most damaging player, but Crowley kept him to just 12 disposals in the 2013 grand final. It didn’t get Fremantle the win on that day but it could do the trick this time around.
The case against
Bringing in a player who has missed an entire year of footy is a risky move even at the best of times, and this is certainly not the best of times.
Fitness is the main concern. Can Crowley run out a whole game? Is he really ready to go without any kind of match fitness preparation?
A 31-year-old veteran of the game, it’s all the more of a concern when it comes to Crowley. Young players might spring back quickly from a year off, but it’s not going to be that easy for a pair of ageing legs.
Going from not playing for an entire year straight to the Dockers’ biggest game of the year to date, that’s a step up that you should not be asking of any player.
In an ideal world the Dockers would give him a few weeks in the WAFL to prove his fitness and earn his spot in the side. But there just isn’t time for that.
My verdict
Yes! Roll the dice, Ross, you’ve got to give it a try.
Sure, there’s always the risk that Crowley will struggle and be a liability. But even if so, is that really going to be any worse for the Dockers than playing Matt de Boer or Tendai Mzungu?
The potential rewards outweigh the potential risk. This is not the move that’s going to cost Fremantle the preliminary final. It could be the move that wins it for them.
That’s my call. What’s yours, Roarers?