Peter Sumich: Fremantle Dockers nowhere near ready to be AFL contenders, might not make top eight next season

It’s grand final time and every expert in the nation is assessing what has taken the trendsetting AFL teams into crunch time. Analysts churn through assessments of season innovators and the clubs who survive the ferocity of September to make it into the toughest game of the year. Collingwood, Brisbane, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne and, to a lesser degree, Carlton, all set standards of ferociously tough footy over the past month - laying foundations for new premiership hopefuls to replicate next season and beyond. On the local front, Fremantle look off the pace to match that finals intensity. The Dockers are perhaps not even serious contenders for a top-eight spot next year. And even more blatant is that West Coast are probably as much as three years away from even approaching finals potential. Dockers and Eagles faithful should brace for more of the same pain next year. Fremantle’s squad and game style, that coach Justin Longmuir and club heavyweights so boldly declared capable of a top-four finish this season, has little room for sufficient improvement to genuinely threaten a finals campaign. The Dockers lack brutal physical presence around congestion and are plagued with disposal flaws through the middle of the ground. Fremantle ranked 14th for scoring this season at an average of 80 points a game. They have also already made substantial mistakes in analysing their prospects for next season, with probably a missed chance to trade out big ruckman Sean Darcy. Dockers heavy-hitters should be more aggressive in laying the foundations for improvement next year. It’s not too late for Fremantle to be more ruthless and look to move Darcy out through next month’s trade period. He still hasn’t signed a new agreement for beyond next season, despite widespread media coverage that Darcy has committed until the end of 2026. A priority for the Dockers should be to bolster their ball-winning power and radically improve disposal skills to generate more scoring. Releasing Darcy, at 25 and with a year to run on his contract and high-end currency, would have won Fremantle a critical trade for a ready-made big body in the midfield or an early draft pick to get an emerging young gun on-baller. Just as Collingwood moved Adam Treloar two years ago and Brodie Grundy last year to free up salary cap space and trade in more specific players to build a depth of talent. It’s an alarming sign of complacency around Fremantle, on the back of their failures this year, to believe they actually already have a list capable of competing with the league’s toughest outfits for finals spots. Finals contests and the late season make-or-break clashes that determine the make-up of the top eight are appreciably faster, tougher, both physically and mentally, and more cut-throat. You need to be clean under fierce pressure. Flag favourites Collingwood are the best at it. And the Pies play as they train. Collingwood training sessions at least twice a week are at break-neck speed with high-tempo disposal execution, heavy tackling and physical pressure. It’s all about high intensity skill rehearsal and doing game-day strategy at match ferocity. In contrast, West Coast training gives priority to systems and structures as opposed to ball-gathering and ball movement. Consequently, Eagles players are not as match-ready and body hardened for the unforgiving nature of contest-after-contest against the competition’s best outfits. The Magpies repeatedly practise match simulation scenarios, both coming from behind and holding up play to cling to a slender lead in the energy sapping final minutes. They are the fittest team in the competition. Those supreme fitness levels are most evident in the dying stages, when their composure and confidence under pressure is maintained without fatigue setting in to cause skill errors. Collingwood are the masters of frenzied surging through opposition defences and pressing up behind the ball so any turnover can be swamped and forced into a stoppage. The Pies executed that perfectly for six gut-wrenching minutes as they held onto a one-point lead to stave off the Giants to win last Friday’s preliminary final. In 50 games under coach Craig McRae, the Magpies have had 20 matches decided by under 10 points. Their record in those tight games is a phenomenal 16 wins and four losses. Fremantle have an awful history of floundering from around the halfway through a season. In the past eight years, the Dockers have perennially lost more than they win from the mid-way point. This year it was again a distressing decline, with just four wins from their last 12 games to slip from 10th at their bye in round 12 after four consecutive wins to 14th at the end of the season. The Dockers have poor skill levels under extreme pressure and also lack the depth of elite midfielders to compete with genuine top-eight candidates. Collingwood, GWS, Brisbane and Carlton, as well as Port Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne at times approaching September, all played swift and brave brands of footy. It’s a style that seems way beyond anything Fremantle can conjure on the weight of evidence this season. It’s difficult seeing just where improvement can be generated, despite three wins from the Dockers’ last five games. It was a player-initiated change in training intensity that spurred Fremantle when it was identified that a lack of match ferocity at training contributed to their mid-season drop off. The Dockers’ most recent fairest-and-best winners Andrew Brayshaw and Caleb Serong are what can be considered A-graders, but they’re not going to improve much more with their high possession and clearance numbers. Brayshaw, Serong and imported on-baller Jaeger O’Meara don’t offer a necessary powerful presence around congestion. Pies hard nuts Jordan DeGoey, Jack Crisp and Scott Pendlebury, Brisbane import Josh Dunkley, Melbourne’s Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver and Western Bulldogs gun Marcus Bontempelli are powerhouse units in contests. The upside comes with boom recruit Luke Jackson, key forward Jye Amiss and Hayden Young, who could stay on the ball next year. But the bulk of Dockers have already peaked in terms of their potential. Defenders Luke Ryan, Brennan Cox and Jordan Clark, wingman James Aish and forwards Lachie Schultz, Josh Treacy, Sam Sturt and Michael Frederick could all stagnate. West Coast face even more unfavourable outcomes with the endorsement of failure in retaining Adam Simpson and his management style and so far ineffective development of young talent. The Eagles will focus on youth for at least the next two years as proven stars Jeremy McGovern, Elliot Yeo, Andrew Gaff, Jack Darling, Jamie Cripps and Dom Sheed go through the motions of finishing their careers. None of those Eagles can be expected to last more than the next year or two, given the blistering speed now set by the competition’s best sides. West Coast’s list management formula for the past three years has failed. Unfortunately, it could also be a long haul for new high performance boss Mathew Inness to successfully implement a program to establish elite levels of fitness at West Coast. The appointment of just retired star Luke Shuey underlines further potential for failure at the Eagles. Despite his outstanding playing record, Shuey does not appeal as an ideal development coach immediately stepping out of the game. He has no coaching background at a time the club’s recovery is in dire need of experienced development mentoring and football education. The 248-game veteran would have been better advised to head to another club with a proven development program to launch his coaching career. Coaching his own team for a couple of seasons — such as in the WAFL — would also fast-track some crucial hard-core learning experiences for Shuey if he has long-term ambitions as a senior coach. Shuey can at least refer back to his formative West Coast years. As senior assistant to then head coach John Worsfold, we devised a development strategy for rapid improvement or bust. We’d finished a disastrous last with four wins in 2010, when Shuey played just six games. With a brazen and specific game style adopted in 2011, it took West Coast up into fourth spot and a preliminary final loss to eventual premiers Geelong. With confidence generated from extensive youth in the list, we played a conservative, slow-moving ball-retention game in the back half, with boundary-line transition, into a long and direct kick with big Nic Naitanui as a target. It required strategy to force repeated ball-ups with Naitanui in the ruck and instructions to surge with dare from the midfield into scoring range with Josh Kennedy, Mark LeCras and Darling as goal sources. The emergence of Shuey with every game in his second season, Naitanui in just his third year as well as Kennedy, Darling, Shannon Hurn, Andrew Gaff, Matt Priddis and Scott Selwood all so young and impressionable, helped generate a brave new style and a total of 18 wins from 25 outings. Reliable defenders Brad Sheppard and Eric McKenzie, developing ruckman Scott Lycett and speedy wingman Chris Masten were all young and emerging back then. Most of those youngsters turned into revered West Coast stars and achievers. That rapid 2011 recovery came on the back of a supremely fit squad, depth of talent with some brave exuberance of youth and development and an equally bold playing style. West Coast now appear to lack the necessary depth of talent and educational strategies for any serious hope of a similar rapid rise from the doldrums of the past three seasons. Front-end draft selections Reuben Ginbey, Elijah Hewett and Campbell Chesser, along with Brady Hough, Zane Trew and promising big man Bailey Williams, have shown glimpses of top level capabilities. Just how rapidly they advance alongside reliable playmakers Tim Kelly, Liam Duggan, Tom Barrass and Oscar Allen will distinguish the degree of recovery for West Coast. It could take some time though.