Dockers coach Ross Lyon says he won't take it personally if emerging midfield star Lachie Neale decides to leave the club, while also admitting Fremantle erred with some elements of its pre-season conditioning.
In a wide-ranging interview with Radio 6PR's Sports Today program on Tuesday evening - his first of the year after being a Monday night fixture for several seasons - Lyon spoke about Neale's future amid the Dockers' train wreck of a season, things he would have changed about the Dockers' summer program, Matthew Pavlich's impending 350-game milestone and the 2016 prospects of Aaron Sandilands and Michael Johnson.
While not completely guaranteeing Sandilands and Johnson would be back before season's end, Lyon said he would love to have Neale in a Fremantle jumper in 2017.
But he says he's realistic about the situation facing the recently turned 23-year-old, who is out-of-contract at season's end, leading the league in possessions and in demand from his home town Adelaide.
"I've spoken to Lachie. I'd love him to stay," Lyon said.
"But if he doesn't I know it will just be because he and the club haven't come to commercial terms."
Many theories have been thrown about to explain Fremantle's capitulation from minor premiers of 2015 to cellar dwellers in 2016 - from the sudden drop-off in kicking skills and decision making, to rumours about the captaincy selection process and changes to the game brought about by a new deliberate out-of-bounds interpretation and a reduction in interchange rotations.
Lyon dismissed the changes as "irrelevant" but admitted there was one thing he would have changed about the summer.
"There wasn't enough high speed running outside of football," he conceded, while unwilling to guess as to whether this might have contributed to Fremantle's ongoing plague of calf injuries.
"The density of work was thinner than we would have liked, in hindsight."
The Dockers' coaching staff, Lyon said, had to get better at "teaching" but remained coy on the speculated-on recruitment of Fox Footy analyst David King to the club.
North Melbourne premiership player King, a vocal supporter of Lyon through the first half of the season, sat down for a one-on-one interview with the Dockers coach four games into the so-far barren campaign.
"When they are paying $1.5 billion for the TV rights they can have as much time with me as they want," Lyon joked.
Lyon also spoke about the chances of the injured Sandilands and Johnson playing again in 2016 (likely but only at the very "back end" of the season), the potential for the AFL to order the national draft on three-year averages (not, apparently, something he's considered), the proliferation of Dockers memes doing the rounds on social media ("I didn't read much when we were winning games and I'm not reading much now") and where injury-prone Anthony Morabito sat in the Dockers' selection pecking order ("needs to build a bit").
Interestingly, he suggested he had no idea how many games Fremantle's greatest player Matthew Pavlich had to play to reach 350.
Pavlich is expected to retire at season's end and is just six games short of a mark reached by only 14 other VFL/AFL players.
Lyon said he would sit down and listen if his former captain proposed an earlier date to hang up his boots but that situation had not arisen.
"300 is the magical number and after that I think it becomes irrelevant," Lyon said of the milestone.
"The big thing for Matthew has been to win a premiership. Clearly that's not going to occur.
"You don't want to talk people out of retirement.That [being approached by Pavlich] hasn't occurred, so it's just hypothetical."
