{"id":47789,"date":"2025-08-06T12:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T12:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/47789\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T12:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T12:17:08","slug":"melbourne-star-set-to-stay-put-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/47789\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne star set to stay put for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a week of change and chaos at the Melbourne Football Club, one man who is certain to remain a Demon in 2026 is Bayley Fritsch, according to a report from <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/afl.com.au\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AFL.com.au<\/a>\u2019s Riley Beveridge.<\/p>\n<p>The Dees made the decision on Monday night to sack coach Simon Goodwin, despite him still having another year to run on his contract.<\/p>\n<p>Fritsch\u2019s contract was due to expire at the same time, but after a disappointing year for the 2021 premiers he had been floated as one of several players who could exit the club at the end of the season.<\/p>\n<p>The 28-year-old is now expected to stay put however, after a solid run of form over the past couple of months.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m told, quite strongly, he wants to stay at Melbourne,\u201d Beveridge said on Gettable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I\u2019m told, just as strongly, Melbourne wants to retain him next year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s a free agent next season. But I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any chance, as things stand, that Bayley Fritsch leaves before the end of next year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite being dropped to the VFL earlier in the year, Fritsch is averaging 2.5 goals over his last eight games, including a four-goal haul against West Coast on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He has led the club\u2019s goalkicking each year since 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Fritsch is one of a number of premiership Demons who have been rumoured to depart the club at season\u2019s end, with stars such as Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Jake Lever also mentioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a week of change and chaos at the Melbourne Football Club, one man who is certain to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-47789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}