Gold Coast forward Brandon Matera is preparing to return to Perth next season but he is more likely to join Fremantle than the club where his father Wally and two uncles were stars.

Matera’s contract ends this season and he is set to be one of up to nine players to leave the strife-torn Suns unless he receives a significant offer to stay and is convinced the club has a bright future.

Coach Rodney Eade is under pressure to keep his job while at least four of his six assistants are not likely to be retained.

Fremantle and two Melbourne-based clubs are leading the bid for Matera’s signature while West Coast, where Wally, Peter and Phil Matera played 456 games between them, have not shown any interest in the 25-year-old.

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Fremantle declined to comment on Matera’s prospects but he is likely to be a good fit at the Dockers given that 30-year-old small forward Hayden Ballantyne is coming to the end of his career and may not be offered an extension when his current deal expires this year. Ballantyne has played only four matches this season after recovering from hamstring surgery.

He kicked one of Fremantle’s five goals in the loss to West Coast on Sunday and had only eight possessions, giving him 12 touches in his past two games — the lowest tally in consecutive matches in his nine-year career — and may return to Peel this week.

Ballantyne averages 13 disposals, 1.5 goals and three tackles a match over his 145-game career, figures similar to Matera, who returns 14, 1.2 and two.

Matera was an inaugural Gold Coast selection and is one of just eight Suns players to reach a century of games at the club, winning 31 of his 101 matches.

Camera Icon Brandon’s father Wally Matera (centre) and uncles Phil (left) and Peter. All three played at West Coast. Credit: WA News

He has kicked 124 goals for the Suns, sharing second place on the goal-kicking list with dual Brownlow medallist Gary Ablett who is poised to become the highest-profile departure at the end of the season.

Carlton assistant John Barker, a stand-in at the Blues two years ago and one of a handful of candidates to undergo the AFL’s level-four coaching program, is one of the leading candidates to replace Eade.

Sources close to Matera believe the identity of Gold Coast’s next coach needs to be clarified in the coming weeks for many of the disaffected players to be convinced to stay.

A South Fremantle product like the five other members of his family to play league football, Matera was one of 12 17-year-olds Gold Coast were allowed to recruit in 2010 as part of the expansion club’s establishment.

He is one of 11 members of Gold Coast’s inaugural list still at the Suns. He has not played for the past month after battling a bone hot spot in a foot.