Ross Lyon was sacked as Fremantle coach on Tuesday after eight seasons in the job. Where to for him now? Photo: AFL MEDIA

Only 22 men in the history of VFL/AFL football have coached more than 300 games. And of their number, only 12 have a better win-loss percentage than Ross Lyon’s 57.2 per cent.

Coach of St Kilda for five seasons, coach of Fremantle (until Tuesday) for another eight, Lyon has taken his teams to three grand finals (four if you count a replay), five preliminary finals and eight finals campaigns.

They’re impressive numbers, and maybe even three years ago, enough to have produced a stampede of clubs, even those whose coaches had been performing well, beating down Lyon’s door to acquire his services as senior coach. But is it still the case? It depends who you ask.

Some of Lyon’s former charges from both St Kilda and Fremantle are pushing his case. There’s been a bit of joining of the dots in terms of the coaching positions at GWS and Essendon, where Leon Cameron and John Worsfold have both felt plenty of heat about their futures.

But there’s no apparent mad scramble to get to the newly-available coaching candidate. The probability that Lyon’s tenure with the Dockers was going to end sooner than later didn’t stop North Melbourne or Carlton appointing full-time their caretaker coaches in Rhyce Shaw and David Teague.

And for every St Kilda person who says they’d like Lyon back in charge, there seems several more still annoyed by the circumstances in which he left the club who wouldn’t.

Why the reticence? It’s not even because ultimately, Lyon is still not a premiership coach. Because anyone who follows the game knows he could easily have three under his belt by now were it not for a toe-poke (2009), an odd bounce of the ball (2010) and some inaccurate kicking (2013).

Perhaps it’s more because Lyon has never been able to completely shake the knocks on him which existed even when his teams were successful. And, significantly, because the measuring sticks for coaching have changed.

While the mantra that coaches are judged only on the win-loss ratio remains an article of faith in football, the reality these days is somewhat different.

For starters, there’s a greater acceptance that the business of relationships, not just with players, but with coaches, board members, staff and yes, even supporters, are important and can help foster a positive environment which translates more easily into on-field performance.

In an on-field sense, there’s a greater penchant for accentuating the positive, for a bigger focus on what players can do more than what they can’t. For training and playing methods which celebrate the game and its skills.

That’s not to say Lyon hasn’t attended to any of these points. But not many would class any of those areas as great strengths, either.

He’s survived a pretty lengthy roll call of assistant coaches at both clubs over the years, a demanding boss indeed. He’s had run-ins with various staff members. And he hasn’t necessarily been seen as a people-friendly representative of his clubs, someone as happy mingling or as patient with supporters as those more central to his clubs’ success.

What of the more common criticisms, about too much defence, not enough faith in youth, about an over-emphasis on effort ahead of skill?

Lyon’s teams have never been high scorers. In 13 seasons, his best result for points scored has been a ranking of fourth with St Kilda in 2009, when the Saints lost just two home and away games and the grand final.

The record defensively, in contrast, had until the last few seasons been superb. Over seven consecutive seasons between 2009-15, his St Kilda and Freo teams ranked either first or second for fewest points conceded six times, and the other year were fourth.

But you do need to kick goals as well. And in his whole eight seasons at Fremantle, Lyon’s teams only once ranked any higher than 12th for points scored, and over the last four years have been 16th three times and 17th once.

The complete collapse of Fremantle from topping the ladder with 17 wins in 2015 to finishing 16th with just four wins is a fall unparalleled in league history.

And if that was a year of absorbing the shock, the rebuild over three seasons since then has been less than a stunning success. Taking in the 2016 season, Fremantle has won just 29 of its 87 games, a strike rate of 33.3 per cent.

Blooding talent? The Dockers have debuted 22 players over the past four seasons, which sounds enough, but is actually fewer than either Geelong or Sydney, both finals perennials over that time with less reason to be pushing the kids through the system.

How many of them will Fremantle be able to base its future around? Well, Andrew Brayshaw and Adam Cerra probably. Luke Ryan. Sean Darcy, presuming he stays. And the whispers about Darcy leaving the club, along with Brad Hill and Ed Langdon, grow louder by the day, arguably another reason the removal of Lyon was made now and not even in a week’s time when the season was done.

Of the group picked up via the draft between 2016 and last summer, only Ryan finished top 10 in last year’s best and fairest. And on a list now the fourth-youngest in the competition and with only 10 100-games-plus players, Fremantle’s mainstays remain the usual suspects – Nat Fyfe, David Mundy, Michael Walters, and the Hill brothers.

Has Lyon shown enough faith in his youngsters? Given them enough opportunity? Stuck by them at the selection table for long enough periods? Given them genuine responsibility to expedite their development? They’re valid questions.

There’s been times in the last few seasons when, with backs to the wall, the Dockers have rolled the dice a little more willingly at selection and in terms of style, and had some good results. But it’s also seemed that when the curve starts trending upwards again, the natural inclination goes back to conservatism.

Even Lyon would concede his teams haven’t necessarily been easy to watch in purely aesthetic terms. Supporters might cop that when the wins are coming regularly. And when they’re not?

This year’s club membership figures revealed a 7.5 per cent drop in Fremantle’s numbers, the biggest fall in the AFL. As a senior coaching figure, Lyon also commands a hefty salary. Combine those two numbers and you have valid concerns about cost versus return.

So where does that leave one of the modern era’s most statistically successful coaches, premierships or not?

Lyon’s reputation as a coach for the now, not necessarily for the future, is one which has persisted. That may suit GWS, if the next few weeks don’t pan out well for Leon Cameron.

Essendon? Not so much. The Bombers have a list older than many realise, the fifth-oldest in the AFL, in fact. They also have not just one, but now far more obvious successors to Worsfold, one a current assistant in Ben Rutten, already highly rated at The Hangar, and now an “old boy” in Blake Caracella, joining the coaching panel for next season.

The options for Lyon are thin on the ground right now. The coaching landscape, as this season has demonstrated could still alter quickly enough next year.

But maybe the message out of the events of this week at Fremantle is that in a changed coaching environment, even one of the most feted of coaches might have to make some more changes of his own before others will make changes to accommodate him.

*This article first appeared at INKL.