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Mark Duffield • April 20th, 2025 2:00 pm
Fremantle champion Nat Fyfe has had another injury scare, with the veteran suffering a hamstring strain after a single quarter for Peel Thunder against South Fremantle at the weekend.
I will put my hand up and say this is a completely selfish opinion coming from a person who has been an absolute admirer of Nathan over the course of his career.
I don’t want to see a champion like Fyfe finish his time in the WAFL in between a series of injuries.
The Dockers tried to build his load gradually. He played half a game, then three quarters, then a full game. But then he was sore and now he has played a quarter where he was injured again.
I am also not sure that he has an impact at the AFL level even if he is picked.
To be honest – if it comes down to a choice between Fyfe and Neil Erasmus for a spot as a big-bodied ball winner in the AFL team – I would rather they picked the young mid rather than the old warrior.
While there is hope he can return, the realities are sobering on Fyfe’s progress since his 2019 Brownlow Medal triumph, the second of his career.
He has played 67 of a possible 114 games since the start of the 2020 season.
He missed three games in 2020, seven games in 2021, 17 games in 2022 and 14 games in 2023.
He then managed a revival of sorts, playing a modified midfield role in 2024, but has not played any of Freo’s five games this year.
The cliff comes quickly for warriors like Fyfe, who have made their legends in footy at the coalface where the ball is in dispute and the strongest and bravest win it.
Fyfe lived and thrived here as a skinny kid in just his second season, he dominated there from 2012 until 2021.
He revisited the coalface in 2024, and managed to survive the season, albeit in a complimentary role to the club’s young midfielders Andrew Brayshaw, Caleb Serong and Hayden Young, rather than as a dominant force in his own right.
Now the injuries are back. Is Fyfe, at 33 and 240 games into a brilliant career that has been brutal on his body, gone for good?
Or can he come again in a meaningful way? The next few weeks will tell us plenty.
