Fremantle midfielder Hayden Young should be reinvented as a half-back in the short term to ensure his body holds up for the team’s push for a maiden premiership.
Former Dockers defender and expert analyst Lee Spurr said Young’s best position was midfield, Fremantle simply need him on the ground.
The club’s first defeat since round one against GWS on Saturday was compounded by a groin injury to Young.
He has played only 18 out of a possible 40 matches across the last two seasons and hasn’t been able to get through four consecutive games without breaking down.
“When you play midfield, it is such an explosive role that requires a dynamic change of direction, it’s significantly different to playing at half-back or half-forward,” Spurr told The West Australian.
“He’s too good to play half-back for a solid block, say like 12 games, but if it means that you get to play him and where he can see the game coming a bit more, then so be it. He can pick and choose when he wants to run and use that damaging left foot.
“The upside of getting him through a body of work and staying on the park is you can throw him on the ball when you need to.
“I think it’s something they probably need to consider now.”
The Dockers expect an update on his injury on Monday, but Spurr says they need to use their star differently.
“Yes, he’s best utilised as a mid-forward and the team needs him best there, but overall, the team needs him best when he’s playing,” he said.
“He adds another dynamic, another lane, another X-factor with his ability to mark overhead, his ability to see the game, hit the 45 and pull the kick.
“He’s one of the only players in their team that can hit the kick through the corridor. He’s a left footer as well which changes the angles.
“So just get him on the park and make teams worry about him. They have to change their structure because of him.
“You can throw him on the ball for five-minute bursts when you need to.
“You’ve seen how they threw him forward against Western Bulldogs and he ‘out-Bonted’ Bont (Marcus Bontempelli).
“You get that luxury if he’s playing. You don’t get that luxury if he’s not.
“If they get him back on the park and play him through half-back for a bit with a view to say, ‘OK, we’ve got him back through 10 to 15 games a year of footy or whatever it is, whatever the timeline is before we start making him more 60 per cent or 70 per cent midfield time.”
Young has battled a broken leg, multiple hamstring injuries and also injured his groin late last season.
He also spent time during the off-season visiting the famed Aspetar clinic in Doha in a bid to get to the bottom of his persistent injury woes.
The West Australian’s footy expert Danielle Laidley had him rated as the sixth best Docker to the midway point of the season.
Former St Kilda coach and Fremantle, Sydney and West Coast midfielder Scott Watters said Young was “incredibly important” to Fremantle’s premiership push “because he’s different”.
“Caleb Serong, Andrew Brayshaw, they’re terrific players, but they’re more accumulators, it’s death by a 1000 cuts with those type of players,” Watters said.
“But with Hayden Young, he can break a game open in a quarter and those players are the ones that can win you a grand final in 15 minutes.
“They’re a rare type of player, so you have got to keep those ones alive and kicking when it really counts, so the management issue now is important.
“They’ve got a little bit of luxury with where they sit on the ladder. I think they’ll take him away now and put a really good block of work into him, but he’s got a history. It’s not the first time that they’ve had to rebuild him.
“The trouble with soft tissue injuries and I can talk from first-hand experience, is once you start accumulating them, you’re never really completely out of the woods.
“So it’s just going to be everyone holding their breath and hoping they can get six games in a row from him at the right time of the season and that’s why your medical department is so critical.
“Some players are built for durability like Serong and Brayshaw who very rarely miss a training session, let alone a game.
“Then you have some players whose body is just more volatile and they’re often those high-powered athletes as well.
“Hayden Young, he’s a more explosive athlete, so that stress at different times when you get accumulated load over four, five, six weeks, he can be at high risk.
“Moving forward beyond this season, he just might be a player that every three or four weeks needs to be deloaded and they actually rotate him in and out.
“Maybe he’s never going to be a 20-game a year player. His history’s already showing that they might need to think very differently about his future“
Spurr said Young’s bigger body made him a different weapon to the team’s other regular midfielders Serong, Brayshaw, Shai Bolton and Murphy Reid.
“He clears the pack. When he hits the ball, bodies move, he moves them out the way, he opens up the stoppage,” Spurr said.
“Serong’s a really good stoppage player, but he doesn’t break it from inside to outside.
“Young can win the ball at the source, he’s powerful enough to break out and use his elite kick, but also he breaks the stoppage open and feeds it to the likes of the Murphy Reids on the outside.
“Murphy Reid is not at this stage of his career an inside player. He holds his width really well and Hayden Young there allows you to do it.
“When Hayden Young plays, he gets that bigger body. they can’t bully him. He gets the Will Day, the Patrick Cripps. He gets that significant large body that can’t just dictate, and the bigger bodies are able to dictate a bit more, not through lack of effort, but just through stature and size against the other Dockers’ midfielders.”