Could this finally be the Fremantle Dockers’ season?

It’s time to dream again – or, at least, to suffer the agonies of jilted expectation. The AFL season has begun, earlier than ever, and I’ll be damned if Fremantle won’t make the top four this year.

I share this prediction not in the same boorish spirit of other pundits but rather with a perverse sense of mischief – being so hopeful seems dangerously provocative to me, as though I’m daring the ghosts that govern the club to vindictively disprove me.

Objectively, though, we have a fine squad. For me, there are two major variables upon which our success will depend this year (all others being stable). The first regards two men on our list: that the supremely gifted Hayden Young, who missed so much of last year to injury, remains fit; and so too Sean Darcy, our hulking ruck, whose body is both formidable and fragile. The 110-kilogram sack of meat and bone has submitted to the knife several times in recent years, and his knees have often objected to bearing his weight, but if he remains fit it will allow Luke “The Unicorn” Jackson to fulfil his newly minted role as midfielder – the man with a ruck’s body, a forward’s contested mark and midfielder’s agility.

It’s rare to see someone of Jackson’s height in the midfield, and it offers the delicious prospect of marking mismatches, but his creative deployment will depend upon the health of Darcy – who, at his best, is one of the elite rucks of the competition but whose body often resembles an improvised explosive device. God willing it doesn’t detonate, so that our Unicorn can be free to roam the paddock in search of rich and surprising treasures.

The second variable is the coach, Justin Longmuir. His system is defined by caution and an exceptional defence, but one whose transitions from the back line to the front can resemble the careful transfer of a Ming vase from one gallery room to another. Our flair and fluency in the middle was not often unlocked last year until the end of games in which we had little to lose, and I’m not alone in wanting Longmuir to unshackle the team somewhat – to concede a little more possession in favour of faster, bolder transitions.

I think we have the talent to assume more risk and temporary shapelessness. I agree with Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo, who writes in his fascinating Substack One Percenters that Freo’s “[s]low, multi-phase attacks allow opposition defences time to reset and compress space. Advantage is routinely deferred until it disappears.”

There are, of course, countless other variables – but for the sake of argument, let me nominate those two as the most critical. The health of Young and Darcy, and the willingness of Longmuir to prudently invite more risk into “the system”. Young, Jackson and Shai Bolton are sufficiently talented and creatively unpredictable to confound the formations of other teams, and my dream is that their maverick freelancing might flourish amid an otherwise coherent system.

Years of fine recruitment have now blossomed into an impressive spread of talent across all parts of the ground and the question now, for me at least, is whether the sum can become greater than the parts.

If Fremantle now plays within the window of flag potential, it’s no longer fun to watch our rivals crouch outside in the rain. The West Coast Eagles have found two wooden spoons in the previous three seasons and have not finished higher than 16th for the past four years. That’s unlikely to change this year, given the loss of their two best defenders – one to retirement, the other to trade – and the departure of their co-captain Oscar Allen for the reigning premiers, the Brisbane Lions. The draft compensation for that loss won’t be enjoyed for some years.

For a long time, Freo has suffered in comparison to West Coast. Historically, we still do. They’ve made seven grand finals and won four, and became the first non-Victorian club to do so.

We’ve made one grand final for nil return in 31 years.

My old contempt for West Coast wasn’t simple envy but my folk hatred of their supposed supporter base – the vulgar, arrogant and hyper-wealthy of Perth’s leafiest western suburbs. But of course, as the state’s only club for nearly a decade, its supporter base was seeded far beyond the green enclaves of Claremont.

If long ago I accepted the egalitarian base of our rivals, it took much longer to forgive their players’ transgressions in their semi-triumphant noughties. Big men in a small town, their witless but unchallenged machismo turned into a very bad dream of jail, overdose and fraternity with gangsters.

As a student journalist, back in 2001, I found my way to the Sexpo conference held at Perth’s largest nightclub. Peculiarly, I shared the VIP lounge with several Eagles stars and found them to be obnoxious goons – an impression that stayed with me for years.

My allergic reaction to them was not unfounded: for much of the next decade their team would make headlines for assaults, lunatic driving and their proximity to gangland violence. Many years later, a senior detective would tell me of the wire taps he had on heroin traffickers and how they caught conversations with Eagles.

As it is, stars died, almost died or were jailed – and the whole period of dissolution still strikes me as worse than the Essendon doping scandal. Ten years ago, I spoke with former deputy premier of Western Australia Hendy Cowan, who conducted a review of the WA club’s culture. “There was plenty of denial,” he said of the team, which was a profound understatement.

But all this is history now, I suppose, and I no longer grind an axe for their once sad and self-destructive culture. I want the Eagles to improve, even if my pity seems both a lame and fatefully dangerous attitude to assume for so successful a rival.

But, truly, my schadenfreude has evaporated. The Eagles have sucked for too long for it to be fun anymore.

Fremantle’s first match, as it was last year, will be against the Cats in Geelong. To cross the continent to play a great club at their unique ground is an unfavourable way to begin the season, and we were smashed there in the same fixture last year. But if in the eyes of God only 12 months have passed, this amount of time seems enough for the arcs of each team to have crossed – Geelong faintly declining, Fremantle rising – and I’ll be bold enough to say here that we won’t lose by 78 points again.

In fact, we might even win.

So there it is, some buoyant prophecy. I’m incapable of denying my optimism for Fremantle this year. Years of fine recruitment have now blossomed into an impressive spread of talent across all parts of the ground and the question now, for me at least, is whether the sum can become greater than the parts. That desired alchemy, if that’s the right word, might depend on the flexibility of the coach.

For some years, Fremantle’s virtue has been defined by its defence – this was true of our grand final team under Ross Lyon. We were shrewdly and aggressively dull. Miserly in possession and maniacally oppressive in defence. But the game’s different now, faster, and I’d like to see the boys fly a little more.

Elsewhere, in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory – aka, AFL House – footy’s high priests continue to experiment with “the product”. Rarely a season goes by without the magic ingredients of the game being tinkered with. Fresh concoctions of fixture curation, rule changes and new rounds are played with, and the perfect product will surely, one day, emerge from their fantastical labs.

This year the wildcard round will be introduced, filling the desert of the bye round in the week before finals with lush “games of significance”.

Only the top six teams will now automatically qualify for finals, while the teams finishing seventh to 10th will compete for the final two slots.

It doesn’t seem like the worst idea to me, though I can respect the argument that it may reward mediocrity. But the calculus to the AFL seems simple enough: more games for fans; more money for the league.

There are rule changes also. One new law restricts the opposing rucks from crossing the middle line when contesting the centre bounce, to incentivise their commitment to the ball rather than crippling the other’s spine with their flying knees.

In fact, play will now resume this season not with a centre bounce but a ball-up – the strange and charming practice of the umpire pounding the ball into the ground being recently decommissioned. It’s a tricky skill, the AFL said, and was denying otherwise talented umpires from turning professional on account of them not having mastered this party trick.

The insufficient intent rule has also been eradicated – sort of. Kicking or handballing the ball out of bounds between the 50-metre arcs will now result in a free kick for the opposition, thus only requiring umpires to read the minds of players in the respective arcs. The rule’s qualification seems overly cute, but nonetheless the AFL has moved somewhat towards what is otherwise a conventional rule in most other team ball sports: that is, if the ball goes out of bounds then the team who last touched it will concede possession.

No, the AFL’s product artists never tire – they are always mixing potions in perpetual pursuit of the tastiest confection humanity has known. Godspeed, I say, and that also goes for the boys of Fremantle.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
March 7, 2026 as “It’s that time again…”.

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