It's pretty much inevitable in a rebuild where there "will" be supporters baying for the coaches head, regardless if it's fair or not. And also people in general have the habit of overrating lists I think, and imo ours in the last few years wasn't good enough to be competitive, due to factors such as age, depth, spine, etc. and switching coaches wasn't going to change very much, even if I didn't think Lyon was up to it.
It was only really now where the state of our list is in such a good shape where continued failure could be more reasonably attributed to coaching and structure, as we clearly have the cattle to do it now. I actually feel like our rebuild has progressed much faster than I was expecting, aided by some fantastic recruits and development. But if we regress now back to 2017/2018 levels, then I think a change is needed.
Coach Lyon’s insistence for years of having a five man forward line tipped me against him. When you add to it one of the five was Chris Mayne who is on record for saying he would prefer to tackle than kick a goal, that then falls squarely on the coach’s shoulders.
Of course seasons were punctuated with the occasional win and ironically the feature which made those wins stand out was that the coach used a six man structure. I recall in 2016, a nightmare season, two memorable wins one of which was against Brisbane, where the six man forward line got the job done.
Now, I think whether or not you have a star studded front six or not is not as important as refraining from handicapping them by playing one fewer or indeed as is Coach Lyon’s wont, even less than five.
I hated our final campaign of 2018 against Collingwood. At three quarter time that game was Fremantle’s. The game was set up beautifully for an unlikely win; all we needed to do was give ourselves the best chance, but, no that is not how Ross does things.
Coach Lyon went beyond accepted standards of reasonable coaching tactics; he started the fourth quarter with three men in the forward line.
I don’t believe any reasonable argument can be mounted that six, even“C” graded players, isn’t preferable to three.
Of course there may be other reasons why a coach doesn’t give his side the best opportunity but, in the final game against Collingwood, I couldn’t work out what it may have been.
That loss to Collingwood so disheartened me. I was off my club. I’d had enough of this coach’s bullshit.
Then something really weird happened. The rules were changed where Coach Lyon is now forced to have six players inside the forward 50 metre arc. Right, I’m back on board. That will fix him.
Don’t get ahead of ourselves. There’s fine print. The coach can get the six players out of there straight after the centre bounce, and so it was.... come round two, after a very impressive season opener we meet Gold Coast and had what appeared to be an excellent chance to open with two wins. Indeed, at three quarter time we looked to have the game in our hands. Now, I was only watching on television and I am bloody certain I saw eight players in our backline within seconds of a centre bounce down in the last quarter. That is fully compliant with the new rules but for senior coach Lyon , where there’s a will there’s a way. Like you all on here, I was stunned with that loss. Bitter even.
This is going to take a particular intervention to fix. That is what I believe has happened.
I am convinced an individual at Fremantle Football club has approached our senior coach and stated “ I set about procuring the best attainable key forwards I could “ ; “ Now stop this ******* bullshit”.
For now I am back onboard with the coach albeit, with someone in the background issuing directives.
I have always had a high regard for the little fella, just not as a footballer.
As for Ross Lyon, I hope he continues to follow orders.
It matters little who is pulling the strings. If we have six high calibre forwards, they should be played there.