In reading about Ross Lyon's history with Fremantle they went from minor premiers and preliminary finalists in 2015 to 16th on the ladder in 2016 with only 4 wins. They finished above Brisbane and an Essendon VFL reserves team.

https://m.afl.com.au/news/2016-08-25/season-review-fremantle

Here are some excerpts from the AFL season review. An interesting observation is the reference to giving up a staggering amount of goals from turnovers.

 

What we said in the pre-season 
We predicted a top-four finish if all went to plan and finals at a minimum even if things went slightly awry. No one predicted a 16th-place finish. No Nat Fyfe, Aaron Sandilands, Michael Johnson, Harley Bennell and Alex Pearce for the majority of the year made things difficult, but their form was poor when the majority of those players were available early on.

What failed
The 12-month quest to improve skills and ball movement has been an utter failure. The Dockers worked extensively on their ball movement over the summer, attempting to bridge the gap to the masterful Hawks. But the Dockers have not even come close to replicating the Hawks and have given up a staggering amount of goals from turnovers in the second half of the year.

7 minutes ago, chookrat said:

In reading about Ross Lyon's history with Fremantle they went from minor premiers and preliminary finalists in 2015 to 16th on the ladder in 2016 with only 4 wins. They finished above Brisbane and an Essendon VFL reserves team.

https://m.afl.com.au/news/2016-08-25/season-review-fremantle

Here are some excerpts from the AFL season review. An interesting observation is the reference to giving up a staggering amount of goals from turnovers.

 

What we said in the pre-season 
We predicted a top-four finish if all went to plan and finals at a minimum even if things went slightly awry. No one predicted a 16th-place finish. No Nat Fyfe, Aaron Sandilands, Michael Johnson, Harley Bennell and Alex Pearce for the majority of the year made things difficult, but their form was poor when the majority of those players were available early on.

What failed
The 12-month quest to improve skills and ball movement has been an utter failure. The Dockers worked extensively on their ball movement over the summer, attempting to bridge the gap to the masterful Hawks. But the Dockers have not even come close to replicating the Hawks and have given up a staggering amount of goals from turnovers in the second half of the year.

And 14th the following year 2017,

16 minutes ago, Sorry kids said:

And 14th the following year 2017,

Hopefully it means 4 years of linear imrpovement for us - haha

Drop in ladder position doesn't mean much. Their percentage fell -37%. Ours stands to have dropped about 42% by end of round 23 (we've seen -40% thus far).

So no, Freo's season wasn't worse.

Yes very similar 

Well that makes me feel better.

1 hour ago, chookrat said:

Hopefully it means 4 years of linear imrpovement for us - haha

It a scary thought that we might improve to 13th in 2022.

but I thought we were on the Buckley/Hardwick train and ?this is just a learning year

1 hour ago, praha said:

Drop in ladder position doesn't mean much. Their percentage fell -37%. Ours stands to have dropped about 42% by end of round 23 (we've seen -40% thus far).

So no, Freo's season wasn't worse.

That our percentage is 77.9% and Freo's was around 65% means more than the relative change in percentage.  We finished up 5th on the ladder with 14 wins and had a 6 game winning streak where we won by an average 60+ points which boosted our percentage significantly. By comparison Freo finished on top of the ladder with 17 wins. Who cares what your percentage is if you finish on top of the ladder?

6 hours ago, chookrat said:

That our percentage is 77.9% and Freo's was around 65% means more than the relative change in percentage.  We finished up 5th on the ladder with 14 wins and had a 6 game winning streak where we won by an average 60+ points which boosted our percentage significantly. By comparison Freo finished on top of the ladder with 17 wins. Who cares what your percentage is if you finish on top of the ladder?

Percentage is a significant gauge of performance though. Otherwise why have it? Fremantle was arguably the worst minor premier in recent memory because of that, because they had a fairly low percentsge for a top 2 side. Their drop off was not as great as our for that reason. We went from scoring 31% more than our opponents on average, to 23% less. They went from 15% more, to 26% less. This is my point about our fall and season year on year being much worse. The gap between our 2018 best and our 2019 worst is largee than their 2015 best and 2016 equivalent. Just facts.

5 minutes ago, praha said:

Percentage is a significant gauge of performance though. Otherwise why have it? Fremantle was arguably the worst minor premier in recent memory because of that, because they had a fairly low percentsge for a top 2 side. Their drop off was not as great as our for that reason. We went from scoring 31% more than our opponents on average, to 23% less. They went from 15% more, to 26% less. This is my point about our fall and season year on year being much worse. The gap between our 2018 best and our 2019 worst is largee than their 2015 best and 2016 equivalent. Just facts.

It’s one way of measuring performance, but just one way, and as with all stats needs to be viewed in context. 

Critics of our 2018 season say that we built our 14-8 record and big percentage by belting crap sides. Did Fremantle in 2015 have a similarly “easy” draw? Maybe they played more games against top 8 sides? Maybe in 2015 they had great record against top 8 sides and that could be a different way to measure their performance. 

Anyway, not sure what the point of this thread is really. Who cares if Fremantle 2015-16 was a “worse” drop than us 2018-19?

10 hours ago, praha said:

Drop in ladder position doesn't mean much. Their percentage fell -37%. Ours stands to have dropped about 42% by end of round 23 (we've seen -40% thus far).

So no, Freo's season wasn't worse.

Also, our ‘success’ was a blip or an aberration.  Bit different from their 3-4 year stretch.

When MFC finish 17th at a lot of things, our culture is to take solace at identifying the ‘18th’; and enable a chronic tolerance to mediocrity.  Bottom 4 is home.

Thank god for Gold Coast in 2019.

Different situations, Fremantle had a solid 3-4 years. They were at the end of successful run of preliminary finals & a grand final appearance. We had one good year which should have continued on this year & the following couple of years, not drop from 4th to 17th & almost be back to square one where we were 5 years ago.