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I’m sure there will be plenty of people who give me a bit of a strange look when I tell you that I’m tipping Fremantle be this year’s surprise packet and play finals in 2018. Fair enough.
The Dockers have won just 12 games in the past two years – perhaps not a truly abysmal effort, but only the Brisbane Lions have won fewer AFL matches in the last 24 months.
They finished the 2017 AFL season with three straight losses, copping 100+ point beltings in two of them.
So alright. You might call me crazy for thinking Fremantle could play finals this year. And there’s a very good chance in September you’ll be able to tell me you were right.
But this is the AFL. Crazy happens. In 2015 I said the Bulldogs were a lock for the spoon – they played finals, and won the premiership a year later. Last year I already knew exactly what headline I was going to use for Damien Hardwick’s inevitable sacking – he coached Richmond from thirteenth to the flag instead.
Making predictions that seem likely is all well and good, but what seems likely is so often not what happens. Just as often what happens in the AFL season is unexpected, twisted, outside the box. So is this.
So hear me out before you tell me I clearly don’t know anything about football. And then tell me anyway, because that’s what makes this all such good fun.
(Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Media/Getty Images)
The first and biggest reason I have for thinking that Fremantle are about to experience a dramatic change in fortunes is that there’s a bloke who was pretty good for them in 2015 but hasn’t been the same over the last two years. You’ve probably heard of him. Nat Fyfe.
It’s easy to forget, when you’ve seen the incredible seasons we have from Patrick Dangerfield and Dustin Martin in the past two years, just how good Fyfe’s start to 2015 was.
He was a little subdued in the second half of the year, perhaps or perhaps not owing to Sam Mitchell’s knee depending on who you ask, but still came out on top of the Brownlow Medal count.
Fyfe actually bears the distinction of having the most Brownlow votes per game played of any active player in the AFL right now, with 0.98.
In fact, he’s second overall for that honour in the all-time history of the VFL/AFL – legendary 1930s Fitzroy rover and three-time Brownlow winner Haydn Bunton senior beats him out with 1.04.
Fyfe added 15 Brownlow votes to his tally in 2017. He’s had more than that amount just three times in his career – consecutively each year from 2013 to 2015.
The Dockers finished in the top four in all three of those seasons and in 2015, his career-best season, they were minor premiers.
Fyfe’s strong finish to 2017 and the dominant form we saw from him in Fremantle’s first JLT Community Series last week suggest he’s about to go back to that level. The man himself says he feels just as good now as he did at the start of 2015.
You get the point by now I imagine. Nat Fyfe at his best will make Fremantle a radically better team, no doubt about it.
(Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Media/Getty Images)
Alright, so Fremantle have one of the best players in the game – maybe the best player in the game. It doesn’t make finals a certainty, or even likely.
But the Dockers have a deceptively good midfield beyond Fyfe, one that when all the pieces move in unison could be ranked amongst the best in the game, and certainly in the conversation for most well-balanced.
On the inside, you’ve got contest-hungry dynamos like Fyfe himself, Lachie Neale, and Connor Blakely – plus veteran David Mundy will put plenty of minutes in here also.
On the outside, you’d be hard pressed to find a team with a better trio offering pace and creative ability than the Hill brothers and Michael Walters – not to mention new recruit Nathan Wilson offering more of the same out of defence.
Maybe even Harley Bennell plays a role if luck is fond of Ross Lyon. You’d be unwise to expect anything from him at this stage – but it’d be equally as foolish to write him off.
Throw in two top-five draftees (albeit not the players I would’ve picked at those junctures) with Andrew Brayshaw in particular set to make a serious contribution in his first year, plus the dynamic presence of either Aaron Sandilands or Sean Darcy, and it’s a midfield core that is ready to rise.
(AAP Image/Brendan Esposito)
As a bottom six side last year, the Dockers have a reasonably favourable fixture in 2018. They avoid any double-ups against last year’s top four sides, playing Carlton, Collingwood, West Coast, Port Adelaide and Essendon twice.
But to make things a bit sweeter, they have a bonus home game this year thanks to Gold Coast selling them a match in order to fit their own fixture around the Commonwealth Games this year. That gives them a total of 13 games at Optus Stadium this year, 11 against interstate opposition.
The forward and backlines won’t be the best in the league – but they’ve got some options at both ends now (especially defense) and if they can cobble together something workable at either end of the field it’ll allow the midfield to shine enough to sneak into finals.
After all, let’s not forget that they have a great coach. I’ve had my doubts about Ross Lyon in the past – and still some now in the present – but there’s no denying he has a mind as sharp as a steel trap.
I reckon he’s the kind of bloke who’d already be mighty sick of this whole rebuilding caper, too, by the way. He’s got a list that’s ready to be more than a cellar dweller – the tenth oldest and eighth most experienced – and he knows it.
There are no guarantees when it comes to predicting the season ahead. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that 2018 is bound to throw some curveballs at us. Maybe this is one of them?
I reckon it might be.