When the forensics are conducted on Nat Fyfe’s career – and hopefully that’s a long distance from now – it will be this season that arguably uncovers the closest truth to life as a modern-day footballer.
Fyfe’s natural abilities have been poured over during a career that has earned him the game’s highest individual honour and the respect of every self-respecting football follower.
But after proving himself to the football world, Fyfe finds himself in a strange dichotomy that is the domain of this new age of restricted free agency.
In straight-talking terms, Fyfe is this season playing to prove something no fan or media observer can grant him in admiration – his market value.
If that aches at a bygone era, when how hard you hit the contest or backed your mate in battle mattered more than anything else, then the new-age fan should not be fooled by the noise that will surround Fyfe until he signs his next contract.
The 25-year-old has preached, in words, nothing but commitment to Fremantle since he first walked through the doors at the club. It was an assertion he reiterated with chest-beating pride when he was bestowed with the club’s captaincy in February.
It was an honour he dreamt of as a country kid in outback Western Australia.
Cut Nat Fyfe in half – and make no mistake plenty of opposition players have tried – and he bleeds purple.
So why then would he delay on signing a new deal for the club he loves?
It’s a fair question.
Put simply, the outside influences of modern-day football. Or more substantially, the understandable outside influences of modern-day football.
Fyfe will end this season as a restricted free agent and this grants him the opportunity to do something very few of us in our workplaces get to measure.
His value as an employee. His market value.
At the end of this season Fyfe will be priced like a commodity. His value determined by the opposition clubs he has thwarted so regularly during an eight-season career. It will then be up to Fremantle to match that. That is their right.
It is understandable that Fyfe would like to welcome that valuation when it comes to signing a new contract.
Almost certainly it will be with Fremantle, but it is pure common sense that he would like to know what he should expect at the negotiation table when he sits down with the Dockers’ backroom staff to talk about his future.
Make no mistake, the contract offers from other clubs will come in, and make no mistake Fyfe’s management will make sure that Fremantle know exactly their worth when it comes to negotiating his next deal.
That is the way of modern football. That is the way of modern sport.
Having worked in the media industry in the UK for the past ten years, the oldest trick in an agent’s book is to release a bit of ‘fake news’ to a media source that will too readily ‘break’ the story. It helps to bump up the value of their player.
Bring in an opposition club that could benefit from seeing a rival over-pay for a player contract and you have yourself the media circus you’re after without ever having to put your name to it.
It was from that textbook that a story emerged in Perth in Monday morning, that Fyfe had apparently signed a deal with St Kilda.
Cue a back-page story. Cue more talk about Fyfe’s future. Cue more pressure on the Dockers to get a deal on the table for Fyfe. A deal that will ensure any interest in their best player is dismissed and the media frenzy that surrounds it to disappear.
That sort of deal doesn’t come cheap. That sort of deal is what agents are paid to get.
It is puppeteering from the back seats. It is modern-day football.
It is, of course, a journalist’s job to verify such a statement from a second source and if it is a lesson learned in that regard then the cynicism of the football public should not remain only with the radio station.
There is an element of shooting then messenger and while there is no assertion Fyfe’s management, or the Saints, were involved in Monday’s story, his agents will not have minded the morning’s events.
When a journalist did make the call to Fyfe’s agent for verification they dispelled the story with a win already achieved. The media had made an unsolicited claim, more fool them, and their player’s future was again in the spotlight.
If that all sounds a bit disingenuous, and that Fyfe might want to disconnect himself from such game playing, then it is worth remembering his recent past.
The skipper knows only too well that a player’s career is short after spending almost all of last year on the sidelines.
A footballer’s career is vulnerable to the whims of injury and misfortune and for Fyfe, one of the most marked players in the league, playing the odds and earning his market value while he can is a reasonable consideration, especially as he enters his prime.
Certainly after earning the respect of the AFL public he has earned that opportunity.
Until that figure is determined he will most likely be attacked for a perceived lack of loyalty to a club that he has shown nothing but pride in playing for.
It is a strange irony of a modern-day AFL footballer, but that is the price he must pay until he learns the price others are willing to pay for him.
Jon boy
Guest
J K you are definately not any where near a legend simpley no very little about football
Jon boy
Guest
Fyfe was rightfully cleared Nankervis should have been cleared Both should have been awarded free kicks for holding Umpires erred if players hang on they deserve to be penalised Yoe took a dive like a sook which was deemed very low impact SO DONT HANG ON
Cat
Roar Guru
Wrong, wrong and patently wrong.
Jon boy
Guest
Fyfe was rightfully cleared Nankervis should have been cleared Both should have been awarded free kicks for holding Umpires erred if players hang on they deserve to be penalised Yoe took a dive like a sook which was deemed very low impact SO DONT HANG ON
Don Freo
Guest
Not quite. What you don't get is that Ross was taking tge P155 out of the issue as he always does with silliness. Has it occurred to you that if a high ranking Board member (ahem...Molly Meldrum) spread this "truth", St Kilda would get Sydney type sanctions? No trades, no drafts because they'd be breaking the rules. So, anon, wrong again.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
"What is the point!" Exactly Macca. Exactly..
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
lol, you really are desperate for that gold star sloshy.
SmithHatesMaxwell
Guest
Even Lyon thinks it would be ironic if Fyfe goes to St Kilda. Dalgety gets it wrong again...
Macca
Guest
Dalgety - So now you don't even see a swinging elbow? What is the point! You know it isn't a crime to admit that a Freo player got lucky at the tribunal!!! And it isn't the description of obvious or inevitable that it has to fit, once the strike was with an elbow it is usually deemed intentional!! As for the low part - the guideline state the medical report is "usually" irrelevant, " “(such as a strike with a raised elbow or forearm) will usually not be classified as low impact even though the extent of the actual physical impact may be low”. Try reading the gudielines before you start your defence.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
The unusual would've been where Yeo's head was when it made contact, dubious or no, as he started to fall over mid Fyfe-shrug (ie. the arm extending out as part of a broader body movement and not an elbow thrown in isolation), any such contact does not fit the description of inevitable and obvious, usual or otherwise. As for the "low" part, maybe this might've been determined by the WC medical report (you've been putting your faith in), maybe due to lack of any visible bruising etc etc left on poor Elliott.
Macca
Guest
AD - I see nothing wrong with a forthright exchange of ideas supported by facts. The process should leave both parties better informed. It doesn't have to be an argument if people remain civil. The system does breakdown though when people like Mattyb have neither an idea or a fact to support it. ;)
Liam Salter
Roar Guru
Are you a lawyer, Macca? Because you sure like arguing! Not necessarily a bad thing, but anytime there's a 20+ comment thread back and forth it's you and someone else, I swear!
Macca
Guest
Dalgety lets go through this one step at a time; We agree Fyfe swung an elbow - the guidelines state "(such as a strike with a raised elbow or forearm) will usually not be classified as low impact even though the extent of the actual physical impact may be low" - so they MRP did something "unusual" to classify it as low impact - this means Fyfe was lucky. Now we get to intent, the guidelines state "If the immediate consequence of an act is obvious and inevitable, the deliberate doing of the act carries with it evidence of an intention to produce" when you swing an elbow it is obvious you will strike someone (whether that be in the head or otherwise is largely irrelevant because you can get reported for both) but even if we don't accept that we still agree that Fyfe swung an Elbow and when we go back to the guidleines "with a raised forearm or elbow is usually conclusive that the strike was intentional." - so again even ignoring the "obvious and inevitable" section the AFL did something "unusual" by not categorising a strike with an elbow as intentional - this means Fyfe was lucky. If this was Sam Kerridge instead of Nat Fyfe he would have been doing weeks.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
That is true, I don't agree with the "head" determination...but I could split the middle and say there's enough doubt about it to hedge your bets on either being the case for the sake of not getting caught up on it. The determination of a fine is what I would more less see as being in agreement with it being not a suspension worthy incident. But certainly there's no swinging elbow at head height and if you've looked at the footage then you'll see that Yeo's head isn't at his usual head height at the impact point either (and the elbow misses his head ;) ) to reinforce that. So this discounts a crucial element of Gleesons argument. If I was on the MRP I'd be thinking there's enough there to suggest Fyfe's actions were just a forceful shrugging off of an illegally grasping opponent and enough doubt from the footage about whther he actually sustained head high contact. I might be loathe to directly challenge a clubs medical report and upset that apple cart if I didn't have to.
Macca
Guest
Dalgety - on viewing the footage incorrectly let me ask you this, if you get hit in the midriff which direction does your head go? Forward. If you get hit in the head which direction does your head go? Backward. No which direction did Yeo's head go? As for the MRP agreeing with you more - they said he was hit high, I say he was hit high, you say he wasn't - how do they agree with you more?
Cat
Roar Guru
The MRP did blatantly ignore its own rules. Once the MRP decided the blow was to Yeo head (whether they made the correct determination here is a totally different issue), the rules state it should be graded as intentional and medium impact. The MRP very well may have made the wrong determination of where the contact was made but once it did determine it was to the head they should have followed their own rules - they didn't. They didn't follow it in the Nankervis incident either.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
You clearly aren't viewing the video properly, either unwilling or unable. The "purple glasses" is just another cheap rhetorical device you love using that answers nothing. All up however, the MRP findings support my contention more than yours.
Macca
Guest
Dalgety I am using the video which shows high contact and the MRP decision which viewed the video and the Eagles medical report. You are using your purple glasses.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
Well as far as I can tell, you're not using any of the evidence, you're just using their statement. And an article written by someone who clearly has some sort of beef with this issue and hasn't actually looked at what happened.
Macca
Guest
Dalgety - OK you use half the evidence available to the MRP and I will use all of it.