That's not venting, that's talking bullshit for the sake of some absurd agenda.
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Rewarding a club champion who is doing everything he possibly can to get on the park while also being the best leader we have off field for 2 years is far from a waste to me. Any kid would kill to learn off a generational player in Fyfe. Isn't best 22? In a bottom 5 team? Please.
You sure you watched the same WAFL finals as me?
Memory of a bloody goldfish.
The Fremantle Football Club gave up trying to compete for premierships when Fyfe and Walters were both at their peak.
His best position would be as the sub if he played midfield. Guys who have
Don't use it ya lose it.
I normally find myself agreeing with you but this is one of those times I can't. He's a great trainer, a great mentor and absolutely someone you want around the club. But he's broken, has been since 2020. He will never, ever, ever, be a full game best 22 player again (a HARD emphasis on the full game part of that sentence). That's just a sad fact at this point. His use is to pinch hit in the middle to swing the balance of the game at critical times and to sit on the pine because even his forward craft is borderline best 22 at this point. We become very unbalance whenever we try to shoehorn Fyfe into our permanent forward and midfield structures and I'm pretty confident that was a big factor in our slow start to 2023 with a big emphasis placed on making Fyfe a KPF. These (minus the speculation on the 2023 slow start) are known facts at this point.
My only point of contention here is that I genuinely don't think it's actually possibly for him to get his body right anymore. But I think even that can be worked around as long as all parties are aware of this and tailor a rehabilitation around this rather than trying to get him up for every game.
He only played one game as a permanent forward. We lost that game, yes, and Fyfe was not great, but it also came out afterwards that he was playing with a plantar fasciitis issue. If he was "a big factor in our slow start to 2023", it's only in the way that the loss of any key player throws plans into disarray, forces changing of personnel and/or shuffling of positions, etc. There is no grounds at all to attribute our slow starts specifically to trying to play Fyfe (specifically) as a permanent forward (specifically).
I think you're glossing over the pre-season effort (and subsequent talk) that centred heavily around Fyfe as a forward. The pre-season games definitely had the focus of Fyfe as a focal point. To me this signalled we were setting up around him (as a key player the went down as you say) and when he went down we hadn't spent enough time with Amiss, Treacy and Jackson as the focal points to the point where it took us until mid-season to look like we functioned there.
The pre-season games had Fyfe as a focus, yes. There was also evidence to suggest from those games that it was working, or at least well on its way to working:
www.foxsports.com.au
www.foxsports.com.au
Some fair points in there. I'd argue it was pretty shaky whilst tentatively working in those pre-season games but there was something to work with. I'd definitely argue your take is very optimistic and myopic.The pre-season games had Fyfe as a focus, yes. There was also evidence to suggest from those games that it was working, or at least well on its way to working:
Frightening Fyfe ‘firepower’ laid bare amid Port star’s injury scare; Freo’s tricky post-trade issue: 3-2-1
Frightening Fyfe ‘firepower’ laid bare amid Port star’s injury scare; Freo’s tricky post-trade issue: 3-2-1
Star Crows recruit sparks stunning resurgence; Dockers’ big ‘x-factor’ revealed: The 3-2-1
Star Crows recruit sparks stunning resurgence; Dockers’ big ‘x-factor’ revealed: The 3-2-1
Optimistic? OTT? maybe, maybe not.
The point is that Fyfe got injured during (in reality, probably before) the first game of the season, which forced a reshuffle, etc., leaving everyone horribly unsynchronised, etc. How would this reshuffling not have been required if it had have been, say, Tabs who got injured?
You could maybe — maybe — make the case that there's more history of the other forwards working together without Fyfe, so that Fyfe coming in threw that out of whack. But if that's the case, and Fyfe specifically being forward was the problem, then the problem should have gone away from Round 2 onwards, as all these forwards got back to working with and as a group they were more familiar with (notwithstanding the fact that Amiss and even Treacy were virtually new to the group themselves).
Note: none of this has anything to do with whether you or I believe that Fyfe is/isn't capable of impacting as a forward. The fact of the matter is that he did not play as a forward in 2023, barring the first game, after which it was revealed that he shouldn't have been playing at all. Any claim that his playing forward was a big factor in our slow start to the season is baseless, irrespective of whether or not he actually is a viable option as a forward.
As if you would know what is best. He doesn't need to be 'at training' in order to be working on his physical conditioning. He knows how to football. Keep digging though.
