Clark’s best and fairest snub leaves Fagan’s clip looking spot on

G’day footy heads, Bluey here, and I’ve gotta say I didn’t expect to be writing about Fremantle’s best and fairest count on a Saturday night, but here we are. Jordan Clark, All-Australian half-back, country’s most talked about rebounder, couldn’t crack the top three at his own club’s night of nights. Make of that what you will – I certainly have.

For those who missed it, or conveniently forgot it, Chris Fagan copped a bit of heat earlier in the year for a clip that did the rounds of him giving Clark a bit of a spray on the sidelines. Brisbane fans reckoned it was nothing, Freo fans reckoned it was a beat-up, and the rest of us just sat back over here in the west and had a bit of a chuckle because, well, it’s not exactly been a one-off theme with this bloke, has it.

The clip that wouldn’t die

Look, I’m not going to pretend I know what was said in that moment because none of us do, and footy coaches have a crack at players all the time without it meaning anything sinister. That’s the game. But the vision spread like wildfire because it fit a narrative that was already bubbling away – that Clark, for all his class with ball in hand, isn’t universally loved in every corner of a footy club for the stuff that doesn’t show up on Champion Data.

You could argue that’s just coachspeak, blokes letting off steam in the heat of battle. Fair enough. But when the same player then gets overlooked by his own teammates and coaches in a vote that’s meant to reward the bloke who did the most for the team across twenty-odd weeks, you start to wonder if there isn’t a pattern forming rather than a coincidence.

All-Australian jacket, no Doig medal in sight

Here’s the bit that really gets the conversation going. Clark was good enough this year to get picked in the All-Australian side – genuine honour, panel of experts, the lot. He was out there running off half-back, hitting targets, racking up the disposals that make recruiters drool. By any objective measure he had a ripper season.

And yet when it came to Freo’s best and fairest, the blokes inside the inner sanctum who watch him train, who sit next to him in the rooms, who know what he brings or doesn’t bring to the yearly contest for genuine team success, didn’t have him in their top three. That’s a proper discrepancy, and it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t happen by accident.

• All-Australian honours are voted on largely by output and highlight reels across the competition
• Best and fairest votes come from coaches and sometimes players who see the bloke every single day
• When those two measures diverge that sharply, it’s worth asking why

Bias from the east, or just plain footy reality?

Now I’ll put my hand up here because I know what some of you are thinking – typical West Coast supporter happy to pile on a rival club’s player. Guilty as charged, sort of. But I reckon there’s a genuine footy conversation to be had that goes beyond simple tribalism.

We talk a lot over here in the west about the east-coast bias in this competition, about how the WA clubs cop it tougher with travel, with scheduling, with recognition. Clark himself started his career in Victoria before coming across to Freo, and he’s exactly the sort of silky user of it that the commentariat over east loves to anoint. Handy with the footy, looks the part, ticks the aesthetic box for All-Australian selection panels who are watching mostly from a lounge room rather than sitting trackside every single week.

But best and fairest counts strip all that away. It’s the people who live and breathe the inside of that club making the call, and they’ve had their say. Twice now in different ways – the clip, and the count – the message from inside Fremantle has hinted that there might be more to the story than highlight packages suggest.

What does it mean for Fagan and the Dockers going forward

None of this is to say Clark’s a bad teammate or a bad person, and I want to be really clear about that because it’s easy for this stuff to spiral into something nastier than it deserves to be. Plenty of elite players cop criticism for their habits away from the contest without it defining their career. Think about how many genuine champions of this competition have had teammates mutter about them behind closed doors at various points.

But for Freo, there’s a genuine question to sort out heading into another pre-season. Do they lean into the perception that their most talented ball-user isn’t quite pulling his full weight in the parts of the game that don’t show up on the stat sheet, or do they back him in as a bloke who’s simply misunderstood and copping an unfair rap off one dodgy clip and one quiet best and fairest count?

From where I’m sitting, watching the Eagles rebuild brick by brick with our own kids learning what it takes week in, week out, I reckon this is exactly the sort of thing that separates teams who are building something lasting from teams who are just collecting individual accolades. You can have all the All-Australian jackets in the clubrooms you like, but if the votes from inside the inner sanctum aren’t lining up with the outside perception, that’s the conversation that actually matters come finals time.

The ladder doesn’t lie, and neither do best and fairest votes

Fremantle have had their moments this year, flirting with September footy before fading away again, which is becoming a bit of a worrying trend for Freo fans if I’m honest. Whether Clark’s standing within the group is a genuine factor in that or just a footy media storyline that’s grown bigger than it deserves, only the blokes inside the walls at Cockburn really know.

But as an outsider, and I’ll admit a fairly biased one, it’s hard not to look at the timing of all this and think Fagan’s original clip might’ve been onto something that the rest of the competition is only now catching up to. Sometimes the eye test from the people who matter most tells you more than any All-Australian blazer ever could.