Former Fremantle defender Garrick Ibbotson has told a story about how he was marooned out of the side by Ross Lyon in 2013, all because of a mistake in a scratch match.
Ibbotson, who played 177 games for the Dockers between 2007 and 2017, said he was kept out of practice matches and not selected for the opening month of the home-and-away season – all because he didn’t quite chase down Adelaide star Tom Lynch in a summer scratch match.
This is after he played 19, 22, 19, 18 and 23 games in the previous five seasons.
“Start of the 2013 season we had a scratch match against Adelaide – not even a pre-season game, we’d organised to go over there for a scratch match,” Ibbotson told SEN WA Breakfast.
“I was playing on Tom Lynch, Adelaide were coming out of their D50 and Tom Lynch led to the open side for an exit kick and I didn’t stop it.
“When we came back to Perth, Ross got me in and he showed me the vision and Tom Lynch must have trained at St Kilda initially when Ross was there and he goes ‘mate, Tom Lynch couldn’t run out of sight in a week, I could catch up with him. If you can’t stop that, there’s only two things happening, he’s better than you or you’re not trying’. And he goes: ‘I think you’re not trying’.
“So I was in there with Chris Bond, Ross Lyon, Jason Weber who was a sports scientist at the time, Simon Lloyd and Ross goes, ‘You’re done, you’re not going to play’.
“I didn’t play for eight weeks after that. Didn’t play any of the pre-season, didn’t play the first four weeks of the home-and-away season, played Round 5 of 2013 because of that.
“I think he thought I should be able to stop that, but because I didn’t, I wasn’t trying, and I was done. I didn’t know what was going on for eight weeks and then I got back in the side.”
Ibbotson would go on to play 13 games for Freo that season, averaging a career-high 21.7 disposals and 8.2 marks per game.