That story has Fremantle, having come so close to the premiership summit the season before last, then bowing out of the finals in straight sets last year, in a gradual, if not catastrophic decline. The Dockers, for the second year in a row, will be the oldest list in the AFL in 2015. They will have 12 players aged 29 or older. Three mainstays – captain Matthew Pavlich, ruckman Aaron Sandilands and key defender Luke McPharlin – are 32 or 33. Freo's intent to find a couple of extra goals per game in 2014 wasn't realised, the Dockers again supreme defensively, but still ranking only seventh in the competition for points scored. And there seemed a sort of symbolism about the last game of last season – the semi-final defeat at the hands of Port Adelaide, when Fremantle couldn't capitalise on their early dominance (6.11 to half-time), and were eventually overrun by a team now the subject of the sort of hype the Dockers were only a couple of pre-seasons ago. Port Adelaide's aggressive run and carry, say the cognoscenti, is where the game is going. A suggestion at which Lyon finds it hard to suppress a grin.

"So where was the game going in the first half?" he chuckles. "We forced Port to change the way they played. They like to get a plus-one behind the ball and start a chain and go. In the end, they had to get rid of it. Run all over us? We spent a fair bit of energy early, but should have had a fair buffer. And with eight minutes or something to go, I think we were still in front. "I don't dwell on the past too much, all I know is we need to improve and Port are a very good team. Maybe they're where footy's going. Or maybe it's where Hawthorn is taking the game. I hear about these big shifts all the time. I don't see the game changing every four weeks. There's shifts going along, but the fundamentals stay the same … don't fumble, win the ball, make the tackle, hit a target, convert in front of goal." Lyon is convinced his side does those as well as anyone. That the necessary improvements with essentially the same materials are within reach. And that Fremantle are perhaps better placed now than they were even a year ago coming off a 15-point grand final defeat. Why? "There's always some fall-out. It doesn't always work like 'we'll go and train the house down now because of that disappointment'," he says. "It takes a while to work your way through that, and it was a short break coming back. How did they handle that? Well, it was solid, but it could have been a bit better." And this time? "We didn't like going out in straight sets. We're a proud group, and it's coming from within. They're really motivated. We're really excited. We've restructured our pre-season. We know how much extra work we've been able to get in, because we're now training on Saturdays, which we never did.

"Our players have come back in the best condition I've ever seen them, without me ranting and raving and driving them. I thanked them for their year, sent them on their way, and they came back in ripping condition. We had 21 personal bests in our three-kilometre time trial." For Lyon, the age issue, specifically the continued durability and indispensability of the McPharlin-Sandilands-Pavlich "spine", is a furphy. After all, the absence of the latter pair for half a season simultaneously in 2013 didn't prevent the Dockers reaching a grand final. "I'm not denying they're important players to us. But if you sat Nat Fyfe, Stephen Hill, Michael Walters, Chris Mayne, Michael Johnson, Leigh Spurr, Cam Sutcliffe, Lachie Neale and Zac Clarke down and said: 'You can't win without those three', they'd probably have a little giggle. "Our 25 and unders are really the core of our team. Neale had 32 possessions in a final against Port Adelaide. He can play. Sutcliffe is a staple of our back line, he's played in a grand final, the kid's 21. [Hayden] Crozier has played finals, so has [Tom] Sheridan, [Matt] Taberner. They're already coming through. And if Fyfe isn't the best player in the competition, he certainly sits in the top five, and he's also emerged as a real leader and is now in our leadership group." Forward firepower remains an issue for Fremantle and the reason much stock is being placed in the progress of Taberner and another young tall Michael Apeness, as well as Clarke's continued development as a ruckman/forward. With Pavlich the only genuine tall among Freo's leading eight goalkickers last year, their chances will surely come early.

The Dockers got more goals from their midfielders last season, but injury to Walters and a drop in form by Mayne saw their combined output drop by 50. Lyon might not have been as vocal this off-season about scoring priorities, but the focus is still there. "We've been trialling three talls," he says. "We'd all be playing three if you had [former Brisbane trio] Lynch, Brown and Bradshaw. We think we've got some upside there, but it takes time for talls, the game has never been harder for them to play than now. "We've certainly allocated more time for line training with the coaches. Traditionally, we haven't done much competitive work, but when you've got some younger guys, your philosophy has got to shift. We'll come in more prepared in that area." And if it's possible, so might even arguably the AFL's most intense and driven coach. Lyon's command of statistical data is always phenomenal, and while he'd never dwell on it publicly, the numbers comparison eating away at him the most these days would surely be his personal strike rate of 47 per cent now in finals against a far healthier 67 per cent during the home and away season. Even first thing in the morning early in February in a small Melbourne office on the other side of the country from the coalface where his major work is done, Lyon bristles with positive energy. He thinks his players are ready to have another crack. And so is he.

"I've never been more enthusiastic about or enjoyed my job more," he says. "I've had moments where I haven't enjoyed coaching AFL footy, don't worry about that. But where I sit now, I've never been healthier or more enthusiastic, more connected to the playing group, and more optimistic that we're going to play good footy. We won't die wondering." Or at least not without attempting to pen the sort of narrative about Fremantle in 2015 that he's more interested in reading.