An emboldened Ross Lyon fired back at those questioning his position as coach of Fremantle after he dodged a bullet with a thrilling one-point victory over Sydney at Optus Stadium on Saturday night.

The 8-9 Dockers jumped to 10th on the ladder after snapping their four-game losing streak in front of 33,594 fans, their smallest home crowd of the season.

The scrappy win means Fremantle have now matched their tally of eight wins from the past two seasons.

Lyon took a swipe at the pressure that has mounted in recent weeks, which has included the Dockers’ own members and fans contacting the club and using radio and online avenues to call for change.

“There’s plenty of upside here. And we’re three and a half years in (to the rebuild). I’m not sure what all the hoopla’s about to be honest,” Lyon said.

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“But that’s just the town we live in. I understand we’re a two-team town. I understand the scrutiny. We’ve got that many content providers and not many people to provide the content.

“We’d done so much right. Interstate wins against top-four clubs – GWS and Collingwood. Beat top-four, top-six clubs at home.

“And then we ran into some problems. We’re a young, developing list. We’re not a deep list and there’s some challenges that go with that.

“So if people want to pile on, that’s the business. That’s what we sign up for. But it doesn’t wobble my intent and our coaches’ intent and our players’ intent. We’re a pretty happy camp.”

Camera Icon Ross Lyon was emboldened after his team’s one-point win against the Swans on Saturday night. Credit: AFL Photos

Ruckman-forward Rory Lobb ended the game with a shoulder injury but Lyon said he was likely to take his place against the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium next Sunday.

Captain Nat Fyfe was released from hospital on Friday night after battling an elbow infection and watched the game from home.

“He was really quite an ill boy with an infection. He went south really quickly,” Lyon said.

“We think Nathan will more than likely get up, but not a guarantee for next week. But it would be great if we could add him back in.”

Lyon admitted it was a gamble to play three ruckmen in Aaron Sandilands, Sean Darcy and Rory Lobb. Each of them played a key role as the Dockers recorded whopping wins in clearances (45-23) and contested possessions (157-127).

“You’re paid to take some chances, so it was a calculated risk,” he said.

“They had mobility and we had clearance dominance probably around hit-outs. But it still could have gone either way.

“I thought it was a really strong will to win. I thought we fought it out to the end, but some of the basics we’d like to be better in.

“Any win is hard-fought in the AFL. We certainly picked a different team tonight. We identified over the last month we lost a little bit of game style with penetration going in to our forwards. So we needed to pick a taller forward line because we lost (Jesse) Hogan, (Matt) Taberner and (Brennan) Cox out of our front half.”