Ross Lyon threw a question at journalists after his team’s horrid 133-point loss to Geelong on Saturday.

How long does a rebuild take?

The question caught reporters on the hop, but the correct answer isn’t reassuring. It, too, is a question. How long is a piece of string?

If you are Hawthorn, a rebuild is little more than the transition between the team that lost a semifinal to the Western Bulldogs in 2016, to the one sitting fourth this year.

If you are Sydney, with the cost-of-living-allowances previously in place that allowed the recruitment of Lance Franklin and their academy advantages that allowed the gathering of Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills, then your rebuild was 2009.

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If you are Melbourne, then the gap between finals is at least 12 years.

For St Kilda, who Lyon left to coach Fremantle, it is seven and growing.

At Carlton, it is five, with no end in sight and the knowledge that even the finals you made in 2013 were achieved by default after Essendon were thrown out of the top eight by the AFL because of their supplements scandal.

Camera Icon There looks to be a long road ahead. Credit: Getty Images

Brisbane have not played finals since 2009, but at least look to have turned the corner now.

West Coast spent three years out of the eight in 2008-10.

They won just 16 games in those three seasons (Fremantle have won 20 in the past three) and took the club’s only wooden spoon in 2010.

But significantly, nine of the 10 West Coast players we would consider as their A-graders — Shannon Hurn, Josh Kennedy, Mark LeCras, Luke Shuey, Nic Naitanui, Andrew Gaff, Jack Darling, Brad Sheppard and Jeremy McGovern — were in place at the club at the start of 2011.

Elliot Yeo completed the A list in 2013 when he crossed from Brisbane.

Rebuilds are not about how many games you win, they are about how many players you find and develop.

It is not the number of Fremantle’s wins and losses that should raise a red flag at the club.

It is the nature of them.

The Dockers have now lost 19 games in three seasons by 50 points or more and 15 have come in the past two years at a rate of a thrashing every three games. Nine have come this year at a rate just shy of one every two games.

Geelong kicked 23 unanswered goals after quarter-time on Saturday. Fremantle did not kick a goal in the same period.

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And this brings us to the Dockers’ real problem — a lack of skill that has been evident for years.

Shane Woewodin, the 2000 Brownlow medallist, predicted Saturday would be a bad day for Fremantle off air as we were doing ABC Radio Sportstalk.

All the conditions for a really bad loss were there, he said.

A banged-up young team looking for the end of the season, a long trip, bleak weather and opponents looking to lock in a finals berth.

But what turned this from bad to dire was the Dockers’ complete inability to score.

How an AFL team goes three quarters without a goal while an opponent kicks 23 is mind-boggling. If you cannot convince an opponent you are capable of scoring, they will attack you fearlessly and that is what Geelong were doing by game’s end. It was a slaughter.

The fragility of a young list at Fremantle is a three-year-old problem. But the ingrained poor skill level goes much further back.

If we are brutally honest, it cost the Dockers a premiership in 2013 when they kicked 8.14 against Hawthorn with around 10 other scoring opportunities amounting to nothing at all.

Camera Icon Where are the answers going to come from? Credit: Getty Images

It also cost them a semifinal against Port Adelaide the following year when their 6.11 at half-time meant their lead was 24 points instead of 50.

On Saturday, no group of Fremantle players was able to string a correctly executed chain of possession together to produce a goal in 90 minutes of football. That is extraordinary at any level, let alone AFL level. That is a low point in the club’s history.

How does minus-five in contested possession and a draw at clearances become minus-88 in uncontested possession, minus-43 in inside 50s and minus-133 points on the scoreboard? In 2009 Ross Lyon shifted the game with superior defensive mechanisms that offered his team a competitive advantage. That advantage led to grand finals in 2009 and 2010 at St Kilda and 2013 at Fremantle, but that advantage was gone by the end of 2015.

Fremantle’s poor skill level by foot in particular now represents a competitive disadvantage that makes victory difficult against comparable opponents and impossible against stronger ones. This is the Dockers’ blind spot. It has been for years and it embarrassed them on Saturday.