ROSS Lyon doesn’t want Saturday’s 133-point loss to Geelong to be viewed in isolation - so instead I’ll put it in context.

To start with, it’s not really an isolated occurrence when it’s your ninth loss of the season by 50 points or more and your average losing margin for the year is 54 points.

It’s also clearly not an isolated situations when you’ve won 20 out of your past 65 games over the past three years... and only 23 out of 71 since starting the 2015 season 15-2.

To give that some further context, Damian Drum’s record was 13 wins from 53 games when he was sacked as Freo coach, after the most unsuccessful period in the club’s history.

If you want a current day comparison, look at Alan Richardson at St Kilda. He’s under all kinds of pressure to keep his job at the Saints but he’s won 7.5 more games than Lyon since the start of 2016.

It’s time the Fremantle board got serious about things and put the heat on a coach who has worn out his welcome, has completely coached the flair out of his playing group and, based on Saturday’s post-match press conference, is either delusional or thinks he’s above being questioned.

The Dockers were totally pathetic in the loss to the Cats and there are a couple of stats that truly stand out.

One is Geelong’s 23 unanswered goals after quarter-time. The previous record for the competition was 16.

The other is the tackle count, which Geelong won 73-61 (and 11 of Freo’s were by one bloke, Lachie Neale). You’d think if you got belted by 130 points you might spend enough time chasing your opponents to win the tackle count, but apparently not.

Lyon can talk all he likes about how young his team is - the one thing a youthful team should have is enthusiasm, but where was that on Saturday?

Lyon challenged a reporter post-match about a suggestion other teams had rebuilt quicker than the five or six years he believes his club needs. It doesn’t happen, he maintained, mystifyingly making mention of the AFL in the process - what the league has to do with it, I’m still not sure.

Well this coming weekend, Hawthorn will play for a top four spot, despite turning over the likes of Buddy Franklin, Jordan Lewis, Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Brad Sewell and Josh Gibson from a golden era in which they beat Freo in the 2013 grand final and also knocked them out in the 2015 preliminary final.

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Geelong has basically been up and about since 2004. The Sydney Swans never ever bottom out and are also within reach of the top four.

Lyon carries himself with a degree of superiority in press conferences and he’s just not entitled to it.

His best results at St Kilda are now nearly a decade ago. He got the Dockers to a grand final five years ago but they didn’t win and haven’t looked like getting back there since.

His record suggests that he’s a finishing coach who has had strong results with mature groups. But there’s very little evidence that he can take a young core and make them better.

Lyon didn’t leave St Kilda in particularly good shape for the coaches that followed and if I were on the Dockers board I’d be starting to wonder about what the next bloke in the door is going to be faced with.

Brad Lloyd heads off to Carlton and so do all the relationships he has built in his time as list manager. How many hours do you reckon he’s spent with how many hundreds of parents of prospective draftees?

And then you consider this: one of your highest-ranking staff members is leaving at a time when you have brilliant new club facilities, a brand new stadium to play in and money in the bank. Is it the go-home factor (probably not as he’s based in Melbourne) or does he want to go somewhere (in this case a lesser-resourced team) where he can actually do the job he’s employed to do?

The Dockers like to think of themselves as a “destination club” but their major guaranteed off-season signing look like being Aaron Sandilands, who is 36 and struggles to get on the park, and that’s after re-signing Hayden Ballantyne and Harley Bennell too.

If you’re in a full-blown rebuild built around youth, why do you offer those blokes new deals?

More worryingly, how do you reckon a bloke like Rory Lobb feels when he sees a scoreline like the one against the Cats? Who would be tempted to move across the Nullarbor to be part of that?

Make no mistake, this is a crisis and Lyon and Fremantle chief executive Steve Rosich (his biggest supporter) should be the first ones out the door.

The question everyone seems to want to throw up about Lyon and the two years remaining on his contract is ‘how much will it cost to let him go?’.

But the more important one the club board should be asking is ‘what’s it actually going to cost us to keep him here?’.

Camera Icon The Dockers need a clear path forward. Credit: Getty Images

Make no mistake, there’s collateral damage from a loss like the one on Saturday. Based on the talkback calls, there are going to be an awful lot of members voting with their feet and not paying up to watch more of that garbage next year.

If you stay in the same spot in footy, you’re really going backwards. It’s time for Freo to go forward without Ross.

Inspiration of the week

Sad to see Mitchell Johnson go but happy to see him pull up stumps on his own terms. Overcame adversity to be nearly unplayable when he was at his best. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth... unless he was running in to bowl to you.

Word on the street

Word is that a coach’s dressing down of a player became so harsh and personal recently that his parents became involved and made a complaint to the club. Not a good look.

Talking bulltish?

Chris Bond told us on 6PR on the weekend that all the Dockers assistant coaches were signed and sealed for 2019. But my information suggests otherwise.

Brownlow medallist Brad Hardie writes for PerthNow each week of the 2018 AFL season. You can also hear him on Radio 6PR daily with Oliver Peterson on Drive.