Fremantle Dockers veteran Nat Fyfe is energised, determined and could play an important role beyond current contract
Nat Fyfe might seem an uncertain fit in a young midfield but, writes MARK DUFFIELD, Simon Garlick is planning on a long tenure.
Hayden Young to the midfield. Luke Jackson to wherever you need him. Liam Henry unfortunately lost to Victoria. Sean Darcy staying put.
Where does Nathan Fyfe fit?
And can he get fit?
They are two of the great unanswered list management questions facing the Dockers but Fremantle chief executive Simon Garlick believes the two year-deal put to Fyfe for 2024 and 2025 – which many people already think is a year too long – might not be the last contract he signs with the club.
This is either supremely optimistic or Garlick seeing something in Fyfe’s eyes and body that the rest of us haven’t for a couple of years. And it also requires Garlick visualising a spot on the ground for Fyfe in an increasingly young and reshaped Fremantle engine room.
That isn’t to say the Dockers are yet at a point where they are contemplating a best 22 with Fyfe outside of it. But while they slumped to 14th this year after climbing to sixth last year, the Dockers have had to look at problems and find solutions that haven’t involved Fyfe over the past two seasons.
For much of 2023, they lacked a big bodied mid post-David Mundy and late in the year Young supplied them with it. And Dockers coach Justin Longmuir said the notion of shifting Fyfe forward is done and dusted.
So, what is Fyfe’s place in all this?
If the answer is the midfield then match simulation for Freo mids is going to look more like a full scale AFL game.
Caleb Serong and Andrew Brayshaw now lead the engine room. Young looks a perfect fit alongside them. Jaeger O’Meara is trying to avoid being squeezed out. Will Brodie has already been squeezed out. Youngsters Neil Erasmus and Matt Johnson are gradually being squeezed in.
Garlick said he still had “significant confidence” that the deal inked with Fyfe this season would pay dividends for the Dockers.
The deal, believed to be around $400,000 a year, marks a significant pay cut for Fyfe but it will still prove expensive if he can’t be out there more than he has in 2022 and 2023.
The 31 year-old has played 218 AFL games but only 16 of them in the last two years with shoulder, back and hamstring issues ruining 2022 and plantar fasciitis, followed by a stress fracture in a foot, taking him out of most of 2023.
“The thing we always try and do is … (keeping) the balance between making sure that the player gets looked after but it is in the best interest of the club and on the club’s terms. That is what this deal does,” Garlick said of the Fyfe contract on SEN.
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“Fyfey has had a wretched run which we know in recent years but I also have a significant amount of confidence that the work he is going to do ensures he can contribute significantly over the next couple of years.
“He has got to get through pre-season and make sure that he has a really strong 2024 obviously, but he is fully invested. He is spending a significant amount of time in and around the coaching group and around the players in this last six weeks of the season, travelling interstate, in the coaches box, helping with opposition reviews, guiding our young mids and forwards.
“If the investment level and engagement is anything to go by, we have a pretty determined Nathan Fyfe and if that is the case I reckon there are still a couple of chapters in his Fremantle story to be written.”
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