I have been on the Dockers for the past few years. Sure, 2023/24 were letdowns, after promising so much, but the nucleus of a very good side resides in this team, and they have been putting the pieces in place to make a run for a while, now.
When you sit back and analyse the Fremantle squad, it is difficult to pick holes in.
On paper, this team should be a contender right now. An elite midfield, a very strong defence, and an emerging forward line, combined with a ruck duo that, whether people admit it or not, is the envy of most teams in the league, and you have an outfit that definitely looks like it could give the flag a shake.
And yet, there they were in 2024, sitting in tenth place.
It just didn’t add up.
Of course, we could point to injuries at the wrong time (as if there is ever a right time) as one of the reasons, but every team deals with that issue.
In reality, the Dockers blew it in 2024, and need to make amends in 2025.
I am a believer in what they’ve built. I see the oak tree in the acorn, and think they’re a real chance to finally pop that premiership cherry in the next few years. Could it be 2025?
Well, that’s what we’ll work through in this preview.
It’s that time of year, already.
The break after Christmas and New Year is over. The holidays are finished for AFL players, and the hard stuff starts now. Yes, the teams had been training for well over a month prior to Christmas, but as we head into 2025, the stakes are raised, and the intensity increases.
This is where premierships are won and lost. This is where improvements are made and lists come together. New faces, new colours, old heads with renewed passion… so much feeds into the making of a contender. And as the days tick down toward the intra-club clashes, practice games, and eventually the real stuff, questions are raised about each team and how they’re going to perform in this new season.
And that’s where HB and The Mongrel come in.
We don’t do things by halves here, at The Mongrel Punt. When we do a season preview, we go all out to make sure it is the best, most comprehensive coverage you’ll receive. We pride ourselves on it. If you are going to read one season preview for your team, or any team, this series will provide it.
The way it works is as follows.
Each club has a minimum of 15 questions asked about the upcoming season, their coaches, their players, and their expectations. The answers are not glossed over. We dive deep on each and every one of them – some singular answers would normally be long enough for an entire column. The first five questions/answers are free for you to consume. The next 10-14 for each club are for our members, including a special appearance from Mrs Mongrel to throw her two cents in the mix.
Isn’t it a bit early for a season preview? Well, I suppose, but do you know how long it takes to write seven-to-nine thousand words? That’s 18 x 8,000… gets out the calculator… that’s 144,000 words. The average novel is about 85,000 words, so buckle the hell up with these previews.
Also, if there are any issues that arise after the publication of the preview for any team, they will be covered in standalone articles to act as additions to this preview.
You will not read a deeper season preview than this – I guarantee it. This is where we start the run to the new season, and believe me – nobody does it better than The Mongrel.
Freo… you’re up.
Enjoy.
1 – COULD SHAI BOLTON BE THE MOST IMPORTANT FREO ACQUISITION OF THE LAST TEN YEARS?
Well, what are the other contenders?
The Lachie Weller trade that netted them Andrew Brayshaw at pick two? That’s a tough one to beat, particularly if there is a signature on a contract for Brayshaw in the next little while.
The trade that brought Luke Jackson to the club and created the two-headed monster that people are still trying to tell me cannot work? They’ll be eating their words, eventually. LJ is still 23 – it’s a great deal.
Grabbing the emerging Jordan Clark from the Cats and watching him slot into the back six perfectly? I do like that deal more and more each time I watch Clark play footy.
They’re all nice deals, and have all added significant aspects to the current Fremantle team. But none of them filled a need quite like the addition of Shai Bolton does.
For the last couple of years, the Dockers have been screaming out for the type of player that can crack a game open like an egg, and feast on whatever comes out. Bolton is the man for the job.
In truth, there are not too many players who can take over a game in the entire league. Sure, midfielders can rack up a heap of touches, but so often, their numbers are inflated and their impact overstated. As a forward/mid, Shai Bolton has the ability to not only win the footy, but to hit the scoreboard and punish teams in a manner few can.
He has the best change of direction in the business – a half-step one way to wrong-foot the defender, and in the blink of an eye, he is off the other way, leaving his opposition looking as though they’re wearing cement boots.
With Lachie Schultz heading to Collingwood for the 2024 season, it left a heap of responsibility on the shoulders of players like Sam Sturt, Michael Frederick, and Sam Switkowski. In truth, the weight may have been a bit too heavy, but with Bolton in the mix, suddenly it becomes a bit lighter work for the both of them. They should reap the rewards of playing alongside the former Tiger. Seriously, trading Schultz for Bolton is like trading in your beaten-up old ute and emerging from the dealership with a Maserati.
But it is not all wine and roses when it comes to Bolton, and in the interest of fairness, and not blowing smoke up your backsides, I have to provide a balanced look at the man. As much as you may not like to read it, he was a little… lazy in 2024. Whether he was eyeing the door and protecting himself for 2025, or perhaps it was the, at times, insipid play of the Tigers that led to him feeling disenfranchised, I don’t know. But what I do know is there were games when he threw in the towel, and basically gave the Tigers the bare minimum of effort once the contest was out of reach.
He needs to cut that out of his game. This is not the type of player the Dockers have invested so much in. Really, there can be no tolerance for that type of attitude. If Freo sense it, it has to be stomped on immediately.
He also needs a few big games against high-quality opposition, as he took great delight in beating up on the lesser lights of the competition (only one of his four 20+ disposal games came against top eight teams in 2024).
The upside, however, is huge.
There is a stat that very few players have achieved in the history of the game – averaging 20+ disposals, and 2+ goals per game. When you look at who has hit this mark, only three players since the turn of the century have been able to pull it off. Brad Johnson, Nathan Brown, and Stevie Johnson (x2).
That is where I see Shai Bolton’s best footy taking him. Maybe not in year one as a Docker – it often takes a bit of time for players to find their feet at a new club – but over the next couple of years, he has a legitimate shot at it.
He has the ability to be a superstar of the game, but he was unable to make that leap at Richmond. He was the one earmarked to become the next incarnation of Dustin Martin at the club, and now, there is a chance he becomes something like that at Fremantle.
Is he the best recruit of the last ten years?
He has the potential to be that, yes indeed. But he also has the potential to piss it away.
Every time you recruit a player to your club, you know what you’re getting. There is a body of work that the coaching panel and the list managers mull over when deciding who they pursue. I am not stating anything that these people are not already well aware of, but they see what is evident to all of us – the upside of Shai Bolton far outweighs anything negative about his game.
I’d go so far as to say that he could be the piece that propels this club into the top four, and if that occurs… I like the way the Dockers are positioned for a run at the flag. That’ll be a repeated sentiment throughout this piece.
Work hard, Shai – siren-to-siren. You are EXACTLY what this club needs to take it to the next level.
2 – HOW MUCH ROOM IS THERE ON THE TREACY TRAIN?
If there is any room, the seats are filling up fast, and we may end up with a situation where we resemble the Mumbai to Delhi line at peak hour, if he continues to impose himself on games.
It is no coincidence that Freo dipped in 2024 the moment Treacy went down injured. As a matter of fact, if you give me a second to slap my own back, I was onto this pretty quickly, and wrote about it the minute he got injured. Just to demonstrate I am not full of it, the article is located HERE.
What Treacy did for the Dockers in 2024 was impressive, that I found myself likening him to Wayne Carey in the early days at North Melbourne. I know this is high praise – ridiculously so – but whilst Carey was completely taking over games and imposing his will on the contest, it was difficult not to see some similarities in the way Treacy plays. Namely, the way he attacks the ball in flight.
Not since Jonathon Brown has there been a player so willing to throw himself at the pack and take them all out of play. Again, high praise, but this is justified. Treacy was a wrecking ball. He did not take one short step all season when there was an aerial contest to engage in, and if you were in his path, there were no easy intercepts, and no chance you were emerging from the clash unscathed.
This is what a young power forward should be doing.
This is what people pay to watch.
This is the next big thing becoming the big current thing, and we got to witness it in 2024.
The big fella, at just 21, finished the season with 45 goals, at an average of 2.2 per game. It was good enough for seventh in the league, opening the eyes of many, and scaring the crap out of key defenders both current, and those coming into the league – Treacy is what they’ll have to contend with.
But there is still room for improvement.
Treacy averaged 1.4 contested marks per game, so whilst he was happy to crash packs and bring the ball to ground, the next step sees him clunking those attempts more often, and raising that average to around two per game. If he can do that, we would likely see another increase in his goals per game to hand-in-hand with it.
Make no mistake, I love watching Josh Treacy play footy. He makes me want to watch Fremantle games, because he plays the game in a hybrid style of old and new school. His power in the contests is brilliant, but his recovery at ground level is vastly underrated, as well. He is a rare breed that, if nurtured, could become the centrepiece of a very successful Fremantle era.
With another pre-season under his belt, and having whet his appetite with a standout 2024, the sky is the limit for Josh Treacy in 2025. If there is a seat on the train, grab it now. They won’t be available for much longer.
And, for the record, the Dockers were 12-7-1 with Treacy in the team in 2024. Without him, they were 0-3.
3 – IS THIS THE SEASON SEAN DARCY MAKES HIS STATEMENT?
It’s a funny time of year, the off-season. All it takes is one unflattering photo, and the AFL rumour mill starts turning.
I had someone send me a pic of Sean Darcy wearing a baggy t-shirt at an event in the 2024 post-season. It didn’t look great, and given that person was a West Coast supporter, they were hoping I’d take the bait and jump on the “Sean Darcy is unfit” bandwagon.
But I really don’t buy that stuff. I mean, t-shirts make me look chubby at times, too. So does all the junk food I eat, but I am still blaming the t-shirt, damn it.
I do get concerned that he gets injured a little too often for my liking (just two of his eight seasons have yielded 20+ games, with just 12 games coming in 2024), and with reports out of Freo indicating that the big fella has been working in the rehabilitation group prior to Christmas, I have to admit, I did hear some alarm bells.
Then I got to thinking – what do I want from Sean Darcy in 2025?
I want him fit and ready to go at the start of the season. I don’t care if he spends the entire pre-season running laps, and avoiding heavy contact, as long as he is fit and firing when the first bounce occurs. In footage I’ve seen from training, he looks lighter and more ripped than we’re used to seeing him.
Perhaps Darcy senses what I do about Freo in 2025, and is desperate to be a big part of it?
I can’t say I blame him – there is no room for passengers in a side like this.
At 26 years of age, the time for Darcy to get serious is now. He is now entering his absolute peak years as a ruckman, and with arguably the best backup in the game with him, he needs to seize the moment and become the player many speculated he’d be by this stage.
There is no reason, injuries aside, that Sean Darcy cannot be the best number one ruckman in the game. He has the size and ruck craft to feed the elite Freo ball-winners, and with Luke Jackson ready and willing to step in and spell him, he can provide a real obstacle when he drifts forward to rest. A big, powerful obstacle.
So, what does a dominant season from Darcy look like?
His career-best for disposals was back in 2021 (yes, one of the seasons he played 20+ games) when he averaged 16.6 per game. Although his ruck work has yielded bigger hit out numbers since, an increased fitness base could see him find the footy the +4.2 times on his 2024 numbers to match his 2021 output.
What I want to see from him is more of the Max Gawn role, where he drifts down to play a kick behind the play whenever he is stationed in the ruck. That would mean an uptick in his intercept numbers, as his presence down the line and around the half-back position, would be a tough one to combat. It takes an increased fitness base to do achieve this, as it means covering more ground during the game.
Again, his best in the intercept department came in 2021, at 2.2 per game, but if he can manage to get himself in tip top nick, he should be ready to eclipse that in 2025. He has the capacity to be up around 3.5 per game. Darcy Cameron was the best in the game last season, with 4.7 per contest.
Of course, Darcy being fit and playing great footy means that we may see more good stuff from Luke Jackson, and that could be the key to the forward line functioning at its optimum. So let’s get into that.
4 – WHAT IS THE CEILING FOR LUKE JACKSON IN 2025?
It has to be pretty high… the big fella might whack his head on it, otherwise!
It’s an interesting question, as it ties into the topic of Sean Darcy, above.
Ever since he landed at Freo, people have been critical of the Darcy/Jackson combination. The argument they trot out is that they have two big dogs fighting over the same bone… but that is just complete garbage from where I sit. Seriously, as a backup ruck, Jackson is unlike any other in the game, as he is more effective as a forward than any other big man playing that role in the game. At almost a goal per game in 2024, Jackson found himself further up the ground a little more than was ideal, filling in for the injured Darcy as the number one ruck in 11 games.
That dragged him away from the area he could hit the scoreboard. To me, it is another reason that Darcy’s health if the primary concern for Freo – with him carrying the bulk of the ruck load, it gives the Dockers a chance at having a true three-headed monster inside 50, with Jackson, Treacy, and Amiss working in concert.
What I loved most about Luke Jackson during his premiership season with the Dees was the way he presented between half-forward and the wing. He provided what I like to call a “get out of jail” option for Melbourne in the air, as they exited their defence and needed someone to stand up. His towering marks opened up the forward line and gave his teammates the chance to get space inside 50 in transition. The Dees had a lot of winners that year, but Jackson’s clunking grabs made a heap of them better.
If he can do something akin to that for the Dockers, we could be looking at a massive season for him.
What I’d like to see, assuming Darcy has his legs under him and can play 20-ish games, is Jackson hitting the scoreboard a little more (around 1.5 goals per game would be ideal) and an increase in his contested marking (his career high is 1.2 per game – This is almost certainly a number can top this season).
We’ve heard Jackson referred to as a unicorn by the press, but at this stage, he has been more of a Mr Fix-It for the Dockers. Maybe this year is the one we get to see him settle into a routine and demonstrate just why he is rated so highly.
Also, we must remember that Jackson is still just 23 – he will be better organically for the next couple of years. The sky is the limit for him…
… and he just might reach it, IF Sean Darcy does the work.
5 – WHAT DOES A COMPLETELY HEALTHY ALEX PEARCE MEAN TO FREO?
Have you seen The Big Lebowski?
Do you know about The Dude’s rug? It kind of tied everything together in his living room. And when it went missing, the place just felt incomplete.
If that living room were the Fremantle defence, Alex Pearce would be the rug. Except he is far more attractive, with his lustrous long hair, and all…
Stop swooning, ladies.
The Moose is one of the best one-on-one defenders in the game, mainly because he is like a chest freezer – a complete bastard to try and move. He is just so strong in the contest and can hold even the biggest and most powerful full forward out of the contest.
For so long, he was an afterthought at Freo, as his injury list was longer than my daughter’s Christmas 2024 wishlist… and that’s saying something. He had three-straight seasons where he just could not get his legs under him, playing 21 games over 2019-21 before finally getting himself right in 2022. And when he did, the Freo back six started to click.
He has Brennan Cox, Luke Ryan, Heath Chapman, and even a soid youngster like Josh Draper to lean on when he needs it, but when the ball comes in long and high, Pearce is the man I want under it as often as possible.
Restricted to just 15 games in 2024, he will be looking at another year of redemption. The Dockers were 9-5-1 with him in the team last year, and if this club can get him, Ryan, and Cox all on the park at the same time, Fremantle becomes one of the toughest in the league to score against.
Putting this out there now – if Alex Pearce is fit and plays every week, and has the right supports in place, Freo will give the top four an almighty shake. Come back at me in about nine months in regard to this.
The next 14 questions are for our members. Option to join below.
This is just under a third of our preview. The rest is available exclusively to our members. People, we give value. No same old gabage you’re going to hear from ten others, taking turns in mimicking each other. No played out opinions. Thoughtful and comprehensive – that’s what we aspire to provide in these previews, and your support makes them bigger and better every year. Jump on board.
