The Ultimate 2011 Fremantle Preview | Thebigtip

2010 was an extraordinary season for Freo where we made the semi-finals against all odds considering people had Mark Harvey sacked and Freo to finish near the bottom. As a result, expectations have been well and truly ramped up for the 2011 season.

Unfortunately, it’s been a pretty tumultuous off-season which saw an entire supporter base divided following the controversial re-branding of the club; replacing the much loved anchor with chevrons and the redoing of the logo (my views on this are widely known). We then had the farce of the AGM where from all reports, democracy wasn’t really a priority as any debate on the changes was squashed brutally.

In between all this, Freo have seen their off-season descend into chaos as injuries struck and the number of players with a disrupted pre-season rose to ridiculous levels. Here’s the current injury list:

Morabito (knee) – year
Hayden (foot/ankle) – 4-6 months
Ibbotson (ankle) - 8 weeks
Barlow (recovering from leg)
Ballantyne (recovering from foot)
Hill (soreness)
Mundy (soreness)
Fyfe (various injuries)

Ultimately, it’s been an unsuccessful pre-season as well losing every practice game to date as these injuries and disruptions have really caused some havoc.

So what does 2011 hold for Fremantle and their loyal supporter base?

Well losing Chris Scott to Geelong has been a savage blow as people seem to think he’s the brains behind the defensive press that Freo employed last year so I’m tipping that the defense won’t be as sharp. Losing Chris Tarrant to Collingwood is a huge loss and the retirements of Des Headland and Paul Haselby ensures that Freo have no choice but to continue on track with the youth policy.

That being said, Muzungu has proven to be a find and should play some senior football this year while Faulks has some potential as well so in that regard, I’m expecting maybe another 5-6 players to get their senior debut this year as we’re in the middle stages of a very heavy rebuild trying to clear up the damage done from the Schwabbolly (Chris Connolly and Cameron Schwab) days.

There are no easy fixtures either and an away trip to Brisbane doesn't help the chances of getting off to a positive start. People will be expecting us to build on last year and make the finals again but history is against us as we follow up finals with a crap year. Having an interrupted pre-season can be costly, as we saw with Adelaide last year. It can take a long time to get up to your best when that occurs.

As a Freo supporter, I’d love to experience finals again and see retribution for last year but sometimes it pays to be a realist not to mention it’s a lot healthier for myself to be one.

My prediction is that Fremantle will finish anywhere between 7th and 10th.