Lamenting that Bennell's troubled off-field reputation could haunt him for a decade, Lyon predicted Bennell, "if he keeps hitting it", would make his Dockers debut within the first five games of season 2017 and was on the verge of training with his senior team-mates.

"I heard speculation on radio questioning the injury, that no player had ever suffered a calf injury like Harley had," said Lyon, who likened the ailment to the one that hampered Collingwood's Ben Reid.

"It's my experience that a white footballer has a calf injury and it's a calf injury and a black footballer has a calf injury and it's a drug problem."

Referring to his own reputation within the industry for being overly harsh on his assistants, Lyon added: "It's a bit like me with burning people. If you 'burn' one or two, over the next 10 years it stays with you, and it's a bit like that with Harley.

"We've had conversations obviously and I've asked the question 'would you have done things differently?' But I can only talk from my own experience and we've seen a huge growth in Harley.

"If I'm an actuary and going by the numbers, we've seen no return from him but if I'd had the injury issues he's had I wouldn't have survived the game I don't think. His attitude has been phenomenal."

And the coach backed his personal record with key players as an indication Brownlow medallist Nat Fyfe would remain at Fremantle. But the soon-to-be-out-of-contract free agent had the support of his coach in testing the market.

"In my experience, key players, star players who've been out of contract – and this goes back over my time at St Kilda with the exception of Luke Ball who I wanted to stay – have stayed," said Lyon. "Nick Riewoldt tested the market and stayed. Almost every star player I've coached has stayed. I can't say whether that's happening here.

"There's no gold standard or benchmark as to the best time to make a decision. Anthony Koutoufides took a whole season at Carlton.

"It's their right to source the market and see what's on offer and obviously he'll benchmark that with what we're offering and if it's apparent that he's accepting another offer we'll deal with that."

Lyon said that last year's captaincy result was a split vote amongst the players between David Mundy and Nat Fyfe – a split only resolved after "robust debate" between the coach, the leadership group and consultant Ray McLean in which the coach did not necessarily back Mundy.

With the captaincy likely to be contested by Fyfe, Aaron Sandilands and Michael Walters, Lyon said leadership consultant McLean would travel to Fremantle at the end of this month to oversee the decision process.