"STRAP yourselves in."
So said Ross Lyon in his second-ever (and last) tweet on March 3 this year, minutes after the Fremantle Football Club had announced his contract to coach it had been extended to the end of 2020.
A few hours later, when asked if he felt the Dockers would again contend for an AFL premiership, he said: "I’m sure that we’ll be there when the whips are cracking."
Twenty-four weeks later, Lyon is indeed strapped in for the fight of his football life, but it is far different to the fight he envisaged in March.
Good players, headed by the widely loved Hayden Ballantyne, want out of his Dockers. Assistant coaches also want to exit, with WA legend Peter Sumich the latest but not the last to sever a once-healthy working relationship.
The president, Steve Harris, who drove and signed-off on the contract extension, has departed suddenly.
The club’s all-time great captain, Matthew Pavlich, is about to retire, and the competition’s best player when fit, Nat Fyfe, has gone public with a desire to explore his options as a free agent.
In his 10 seasons as a coach at two clubs in the AFL, Lyon’s demands, particularly of assistant coaches but also of his players have been immense.
Those groups, though, have had enough. Just as Brett Kirk and Simon Lloyd did last year, Sumich has done this year. And Marc Webb is considering options.
Ballantyne’s situation has become untenable, despite a contract which takes in the 2017 season. Chris Mayne and Michael Barlow also want out.
Lyon has always been proud of his punishing ways, and arguably rightly so. In his first nine years as an AFL coach, he boasted winning seasons, from the 11 wins and a draw in his first year in charge of St Kilda to the 18 wins (including finals) he produced in the Dockers’ Grand Final season of 2013, to the top-of-ladder finish to last year’s home-and-away season.
His is an incredible coaching record.
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Now his team sits equal second-last. While injuries have smashed the club, with Fyfe, Aaron Sandilands and Michael Johnson all missing nearly the entire season, Lyon has had regular access to 17 of the 22 who played in last year’s finals.
Lyon’s ways are unsustainable. He will simply not survive the remaining four years of his contract if he doesn’t change significantly. And he is fortunate the Dockers’ board decided to act the way it did in March and offer him long-term career and financial (believed to be about $1 million a year) security, as it could not possibly reach the same decision today.
Ross Lyon has demanded plenty from his assistant coaches. Picture: AFL Photos
For his next season, Lyon’s 11th as a coach, Fremantle is hoping to add Cam McCarthy, Brad Hill, and possibly Rory Lobb to its playing list.
The first two come with personal baggage, and Lyon hasn’t fared well in the past with big name recruits. Andrew Lovett never played a game for St Kilda. Colin Sylvia didn’t work at the Dockers. Harley Bennell has somehow missed all of 2016 with a "calf".
Lyon will back himself to blast out of this demise, and so he should. He has always done things his way, never more evident than when he represented himself in secret dealings with the Dockers when he’d had enough at St Kilda at the end of 2011.
Lyon has deserved a premiership before now, and has been incredibly unlucky not to win one. His Saints could not have done anything more than they did in the 2009 season and Grand Final, and an unfortunate bounce of the ball cost him the ultimate success in the following year’s premiership decider.
Even in the 2013 Grand Final, he coached a side which was down by just 10 points at three-quarter time after it had butchered opportunities in the the first half and was to lose to Hawthorn by only 15.
Only 14 coaches in VFL/AFL history have coached two clubs to Grand Finals. Of the 14, Lyon is on his own without a premiership.
For the first time in his 10-year coaching life, Lyon has failed in a season of football, and for a man who prides himself on being a control freak, adverse things are happening to him.
He’s no doubt strapped in for the ride ahead. But those around him are now not guaranteed to buckle up again without questioning him.
If Lyon is to survive his contract, he needs to dramatically change his ways. History says he won’t.
