AFL Trades: Fremantle's forward line of misfits might just be enough

They missed their main men, but that doesn’t mean Fremantle’s search for a functioning forward group has failed.

The next two weeks will see the Dockers build a group of great intrigue, with pieces pulled from across the league.

Fremantle reportedly had their sights set on Melbourne’s Jesse Hogan and Greater Western Sydney’s Rory Lobb coming into this season’s trade period. Both are Western Australians, so the thinking went a return to the west is more appealing than a journey over.

Neither remains on the board, choosing to sign two-year deals that tie them to their current clubs to the end of the 2019 season. Alas.

Both Hogan and Lobb may become available around the time of Fremantle’s 2020 deadline, but in the intermittent period, they will have to do without them. In their place, the Dockers are set to unveil a motley crew of cast-offs and maligned home-grown talent. (Click to Tweet)

Fremantle have never been a potent scoring side, even before current head coach Ross Lyon joined the team in 2012.

The Dockers’ offensive peak of the past decade came in 2007, when the side scored 100 points per game with an Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER) of +7.9. They were the third-best scoring side that year but finished 11th on account of a defence ranked 11th in the league.

This was the lot of the pre-Lyon Fremantle: an offence which always ranked around the middle of the road or slightly above, but a porous defence that held them back from all but two September sojourns.

Even by their Lyon-era standards, the 2016 season was a point-scoring wasteland for Fremantle. The team ended the season with the third-worst OER in the league, and just 0.03 per cent more potent than 17th-placed Carlton.

This was as much to do with their decimated midfield as lack of forward line personnel; Fremantle lost the time in possession battle by an average of 6.5 minutes per game, and, when they did hold the ball, they scored at 18 per cent below the league average rate.

The Dockers won the time in possession count just four times, three of those coming in a three-week stretch where they played Essendon, Brisbane and Port Adelaide (who are the least likely team to hold the ball in the league). The final victory came in that bizarre Round 23 encounter with the eventual premiers, the Western Bulldogs.

In this respect, there is some cause for optimism in Dockerland. Fremantle’s young midfield brigade has a purer pedigree than what appears at first glance.

The Dockers have culled many of the 2013 grand final foot soldiers. Clancee Pearce, Matt De Boer and Tendai Mzungu were delisted last week, with Michael Barlow expected to leave (mistakenly for Fremantle, in my view) in a trade sometime in the next fortnight. In their place will emerge the seeds planted in years past.

The two Lachies, Neale and Weller, took immense strides in 2016, while recent draftees Connor Blakely and Darcy Tucker played meaningful time through the middle. Mature age recruit Shane Yarran spent fleeing periods on the ball. Ed Langdon and Ethan Hughes saw game time, too. Stephen Hill had a career-best year shouldering a touch more of the inside load, a role which seems counter-intuitive given his range.

David Mundy had his worst season in forever, and at 32 with 250 games on his odometer he would not have been pleased with his lack of influence this season. He will return, even as a fifth or six wheel, in a fully-fit Fremantle midfield.

Fremantle will also get two very good players back. You might have heard of them: Nat Fyfe and Harley Bennell. Bennell missed the entire year with a calf injury that Fremantle took an exceedingly, almost excessively, cautious attitude towards in an effort to ensure it is as strong as it can be going forward.

Fyfe missed with a recurrence of his 2015 broken leg, the club again taking a cautious approach to his recovery. There is little reason to believe Fyfe cannot return as a top-five or ten player in the league – he left as the clear number one, but that title has been emphatically seized by a man in hoops.

Bennell also has the potential to be a top-ten player, albeit with different strengths and weaknesses to Fyfe. At his best on the Gold Coast, Bennell was unique force forward of centre, averaging 20 disposals, a goal and a half and a direct score assist per game in a 15-game season in 2014. He isn’t a high-quality user of the ball, but his athleticism and pace more than compensate.

When I foolishly predicted a second straight top-four finish for the two Western Australian sides in the pre-season, Bennell was to revolutionise Fremantle’s structure up forward by adding potency they hadn’t seen since Matthew Pavlich was at his peak.

Instead, he didn’t even play for Peel Thunder.

Bennell and Fyfe were to form an offensive one-two punch that would be a handful for every side in the competition. This duo looms large over Fremantle’s scoring prospects next season.

A midfield game plan must also be crafted, though.

Ross Lyon released the shackles last season, softening the game’s hardest press in favour of a more position-oriented scheme. The thinking goes that Fremantle’s structures did not allow for the ball to move freely once the Dockers had gained possession – instead, it would struggle up the field like it was being pulled by a magnetic force.

Those shackles were freed, but the foot soldiers of teams past did not have the skill to use it. A regenerated midfield, with its two best names available, will afford Fremantle the chance to try again.

In many respects, Fremantle’s goal with its current team should be centred on the middle of the ground. Viewed through this lens, the bit-parts the Dockers will seek acquire in the next fortnight make far more sense. They don’t need to take 79 marks inside 50 like Tom Hawkins, or kick 82 goals like Josh Kennedy, or take 62 contested marks like Tom Lynch.

They merely need to be competitive and “play their role,” as Ross himself would say.

Shane Kersten and Cam McCarthy are set to unite – all things going well, of course – as an unproven duo with 58 games and 77 goals between them.

They will join the maligned Matt Taberner, elite Michael Walters and Weller as Fremantle’s forward line mainstays. They are unlikely to break into the top half of the competition as a collective for effectiveness, at least not in the short-term.

But they will take more than the nine – nine, people! – marks inside the stripe that Fremantle managed to grab in 2016. They will all require opposition attention if coached effectively, and afford Fremantle’s potent midfield an array of targets they have not had in their time under Lyon.

There remains some uncertainty as to whether Fremantle have the capital to bring in both McCarthy and Kersten, as well as acquire Hawthorn’s Brad Hill. This is where the tension regarding Barlow is likely to come to a head, and indeed his link to Gold Coast, rich in second-round picks, is telling.

Fremantle dealt their 2016 second-round pick to the Suns in the Harley Bennell trade. They may need to get it back somehow, or trade in someone else’s pick to trade to Geelong or the Giants. They will likely receive a second-round compensation pick for the departing Chris Mayne given the contract he is set to be offered by Collingwood.

Bringing in all of their targets will likely result in the Dockers mostly punting both this and next year’s drafts, backing in their young emerging players as the core that will take them forward in the next five years.

It will also mean Fremantle head into 2017 with holes everywhere in their back half. It is unclear how fit fullback Michael Johnson will be, while the emergent Alex Pearce returns from a broken leg.

One of Zac Dawson or Alex Silvagni will see plenty of playing time. Cam Sutcliffe and Tom Sheridan remain unproven as medium size defenders, while Garrick Ibbotson and Lee Spurr spent time out of the team last year. Sam Collins showed signs of a solid key defender, but he still needs time to develop.

The Dockers have been linked to the Western Bulldogs’ Joel Hamling in recent days, who would be a good get down back; getting him will be a challenge given the rest of their targets.

Fremantle are set to make some significant moves in the next fortnight, bringing in role players to help compliment their star-studded midfield group.

We’ve seen this before at the Dockers; this time, Fremantle will assemble a group of misfits they will hope are greater than the sum of their parts.