A captain without a contract? Smells a bit fishy, Fremantle

On Tuesday the Fremantle Dockers announced that Nat Fyfe would take over as club captain, just 12 months after David Mundy took the role, following Matthew Pavlich’s decision to give it up at the end of 2015.

It’s a move that shouldn’t come as any kind of a surprise – a superstar player becoming the captain of his club is an entirely expected development, much as it was for Joel Selwood or Scott Pendlebury.

That’s true here too, or it would be, if it weren’t for one nasty little complication – the fact that Nat Fyfe is out of contract at the end of 2017, will be a free agent then, and by his own admission isn’t in any kind of a rush to sign a new deal with the Dockers.

Now, there’s no shortage of completely innocent reasons why this could be.

Fyfe missed the majority of last year with a broken leg and, like a lot of players who missed a lot of time through injury, may want to get back on the field and be playing before signing a deal to ensure he gets the maximum value out of a new contract.

In addition, it’s worth remembering that we still don’t have a Collective Bargaining Agreement for 2017 and beyond yet (seriously, Gill, what’s the deal with that?) – although they’d have inklings, Fyfe and Fremantle don’t know for certain what the salary cap is going to look like in the near future.

Fyfe is arguably the No.1 player in the game, top two at least, and should continue to be in the mix for that title for the next five years. He deserves every spare buck the Dockers have, but they don’t even know what their budget is yet.

I can’t fault the logic of either of those arguments and they may well turn out to be true. But I’d be lying if I told you I was even a little convinced. My estimation is that if Fyfe really wanted to already have a contract in place for 2018 and beyond, it’d be done by now. If it’s not already done, that means it’s not a priority, and if it’s not a priority, that speaks volumes.

A lot of Dockers fans would have seen the news that Fyfe will captain the club and taken it as a clear sign that he will be a one-club player.

History tells us that is not necessarily the case. It’s a rare occurrence, but we have seen captains traded away from their clubs – Ryan Griffen and Chris Judd being the most recent examples.

In the case of Griffen, it seemed he had the captaincy thrust upon him, never really wanted it, and never really felt comfortable with it. He wasn’t the only senior player to leave the Bulldogs that year, no surprise given the rumours that many were a bit frosty with then-coach Brendan McCartney.

A potential Fyfexit scenario wouldn’t bear much resemblance to that incidence though. If it did happen, I suspect it’d be more like Judd: a player who was more than happy to wear the mantle of captain, but ultimately didn’t let it prevent the realisation of ambitions that went beyond his current club.

Fyfe is a smart guy, more than enough to see the potential benefits. It’s not just the money another club could offer – it’s the choice between being a big fish in a state with two clubs, or one with ten. Just look at how Patrick Dangerfield’s media exposure has exploded since he moved to Geelong and you’ll see what I mean.

There’ll be no shortage of speculation over Fyfe’s future this year though, so let’s not natter about that overmuch. Instead, I’ll ask, how does this decision look from a Fremantle perspective?

Fyfe is exactly the kind of player you would want to have captain your club. However, it seems curious that he was overlooked for the role in favour of David Mundy, but just a year later has become the preferred option.

That seems even stranger when you weigh in the fact the Fyfe played only a handful of games last year. Had he recorded another belter of a season that made him impossible not to pick, sure, that would make sense – but he did not.

The captaincy was decided by a player vote, but there was rumour and innuendo about the player vote that elected Mundy last year, and it would be naive of us to think that Ross Lyon and Fremantle’s other relevant bigwigs rubber-stamped this appointment without thought.

The Dockers have undergone a large amount of change in the last year to be fair, and their mindset when they appointed Mundy would be very different to their mindset right now. They may be saying to themselves this is a new era, and we need our leader of the future at the helm.

If that’s the case however, there’s no way that this decision should’ve been announced without a five-years-minimum contract coming alongside it. If you’re going to build the future around Fyfe, you’ve got to be sure he’s going to be there, and until there’s signature on the dotted line, you can’t be.

Many have instead asked then if this is a move not designed to commit Fremantle to Fyfe, but to make Fyfe commit to Fremantle. I can’t say I’m of this mode of thought – and I can’t say that I’m not, either – but if that is the way of things, it’s very much a case of putting the cart before the horse.

There’s a lot left to play out here and all we can say with certainty is that the Dockers have gone all-in on keeping Fyfe and building the future around him. His decision – Fyfexit or Fremain-tle? – will make or break this era in the club’s history.

Either way, it’s going to be huge. In the immortal words of Ross Lyon’s seldom-used Twitter account: strap yourselves in.