Why I won the medal

NAT Fyfe has credited a sledge from coach Ross Lyon that he was “cruising” and a chance meeting with a pilates instructor at a Fremantle cafe for leading him to his second Brownlow Medal in five years.

The Fremantle captain labelled 2019 his “best year so far”, believing he was able to have a significant impact in all 20 games that he played after staying free of softtissue injuries.

After missing six games with a serious hamstring injury last year, Fyfe was approached by a “spiritual” Pilates instructor by the name of Trudy last July and was offered free one-on-one pilates lessons which he took up.

“My No.1 goal coming in was to play all season and I had an amazing pilates instructor, Trudy, who found me in the street a week after I tore my hamstring last year and said, ‘You need to come and see me’,” Fyfe said.

“She came up to me and was a bit of a spiritual person and said, ‘I had this inkling you were going to hurt yourself last week’ and I said, ‘Where were you then?’

“Two hours a week, every week since November last year [I worked with her] and I got through the year with no soft tissue.

“I played every game bar two, in which I had concussion and my elbow. But that becomes the blueprint for me the next two or three years.

“I tried it for a month and 10 or 11 months later I sit here as a Brownlow medallist so I’m incredibly grateful for her.”

Fyfe said former Dockers coach Lyon had also been a key part of his development both as a player and captain and had challenged him again this year.

“As recently as last year, about December, I was just going through the motions with my training and preparation with the idea of playing more footy towards the back end of the season,” Fyfe said. “He challenged me to say, ‘You’re cruising, I don’t think how you’re performing and preparing at training is up to standard, and I think you’ve got more in you’.

“That was a spark to really get going.” Fyfe said an elbow injury he carried throughout much of the year — which led to him wearing a sleeve on his right arm — had also challenged him and would continue to do so.

“It bothered me on a couple of games,” Fyfe said.

“When I landed heavily on my elbow it would flare up, fill up with fluid, to the point where in the Hawthorn game [in Round 17] I landed on it quite heavily and was getting some contact to it and I ended up getting an infection with it during the week.

“So I don’t think I’m completely out of the woods with it yet. The sleeve helped a fair bit, but it’s probably going to be something I’ll have to juggle for probably the next six months.”

Having turned 28 just last week, Fyfe could yet become a three-time Brownlow Medal winner.

However, the 2015 and 2019 winner said he was “jealous” of the two teams that were playing in this week’s grand final and was striving to be a premiership captain far more.

“The Brownlow’s a weird one because I don’t have a premiership medal,” Fyfe said yesterday.

“So I’d hate to be sitting here at the end of my career with two or maybe three Brownlows and no premiership. I’d trade these in in a heartbeat for the opportunity just to play in another grand final.”