Fremantle Dockers star Josh Treacy reveals inner workings of forward trio with Pat Voss and Jye Amiss

Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood and Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone combined in the mid-1960s to make what is regarded as the greatest Western ever: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The Fremantle Dockers are directing their own 2025 version which they might call The Good, the Big and the Snarly. Jye Amiss, Josh Treacy and Patrick Voss are the lead roles in what is fast becoming a smash hit, with compelling best forward line support performances from Shai Bolton, Michael Frederick, Murphy Reid and Sam Switkowski. Voss and Amiss are only 21. Treacy is 22. Their craft, leading patterns and synchronicity are already a handful for opposition defences. In two or three years’ time, it might be a Burswood Chainsaw Massacre. Last season, Treacy and Amiss kicked 45 and 36 goals, while Voss passed his audition with seven from seven games after being snared as a pre-season supplementary pick after being offloaded by Essendon. This year the trio have shared the bounty, with 26, 17 and 14 for a combined 57 goals. There is a fourth dimension too, when resting ruck Luke Jackson or Sean Darcy drift forward. Treacy regularly attracts the best defender. He has a Panzer-sized tank, hits packs for fun like a kid who refuses to take his shoes off in a bouncy castle, and from a set shot is as reliable as the Fremantle Doctor. He plays high, he plays deep, he plays hard and he plays for four quarters. Always a forward, apart from some brief stints in the ruck as a junior, Treacy has played in every game so far in 2025 and kicked 26.13 on the back of a breakout season last year when he posted 45.15 from 20 games and finished fourth in the Doig Medal. He says the understanding of the tall trio is building each week. “Between the three of us, our roles are interchangeable,” Treacy told The West Australian. “We share the workload of our three, big boy roles, and we’re finding other ways to score as well. “We feel like there’s three big boys who can impact, not only in the air, but as soon as it hits the ground we’re just as agile as some of our smaller blokes, so we feel that is an advantage. “But it’s a week at a time and we still have a lot to learn. Vossy gives us another dynamic. And when we do play Sean (Darcy) and Dogga (Jackson) in attack as well, it really does stretch the defences.” Jackson has been the highest-rated player in the competition since round 10, forced to ruck solo as Darcy has returned from injury or being managed through short break. When the pair have both played, Jackson has rotated through the midfield as well as attack. Treacy said that was a tactic that could catch opponents off guard. “I feel like it’s a bit of a floating thing that we just have up our sleeve, and is a real weapon for us,” he said. “To be able to have a guy like that, to be able to float around the ground and kind of do as he pleases, it’s a real advantage.” Treacy said there was no doubt Voss, who has played 10 games this season, had given them another edge. “He’s a great ball of energy and toughness. He’s not afraid to get in and go and get it,” Treacy said. “It brings a predictable contest, and he’s a real athlete. So it brings another dynamic forward to what we already have in our forward line that just is going to keep creating headaches for opposition back lines.” Voss’s celebration of a last quarter goal in the Dockers’ 41-point win over Essendon, the club that delisted him at the end of the 2023 season, stamped his status as the club’s latest cult hero. It helped clear space for Treacy, who returned to the scoreboard with three goals after three matches without a major. And then there is Bolton, the silky one, whose hardness Treacy said was underrated. The dual Richmond premiership players has kicked 19 goals and stacked up clearances swinging between attack and the midfield. “He’s brought a bit of aggression and he sticks up for us as quite a young forward line,” Treacy said. “He’s not afraid to fly the flag for us and really throw his weight around, which I love, and clearly the class and the X factor that he has and his leadership as well. “I think a lot of people underestimate that hardness. And you know, he’s played in big games for a big club and what he’s been able to bring for us is, you know, I feel like he’s bigger than his X Factor and all the polish that everyone sees. “He’s become a real leader for us down there.” Treacy has been compared to Hawthorn premiership centre-half forward Dermott Brereton, who terrorised defences with skill and brutality in the 1980s and early 90s. It was fitting then that Brereton was lavish in his praise of Treacy after a match winning performance against Gold Coast’s talismanic defender Sam Collins in 2024. “The boy Josh Treacy was just everything you want in a power forward,” Brereton said on SEN. “He took a mark in a six-man pack, not a big three or four-man pack, he outreached and jumped over the top of a six-man pack. “Then Sam Collins, who is not going to make the hall of fame, but... he’s going to play 200 games, Sam Collins. “But Josh Treacy at one stage just running back towards goal just saw him and steamrolled him and just banged him to the ground, he fizzled him. “That’s your power forward who brutally charges into the opposition, who brilliantly out-marks the opposition, and who bravely will stand underneath the ball when it’s kicked up on his head. “He is the alpha male.” And this from Fox Footy’s David King after Treacy’s match-saving mark in the dying seconds of the Dockers’ win over North Melbourne in round 14. “This is why the football world is saying this guy has the ability to be unique,” King said. “Understood the situation, went back where the team needed him to go and takes the mark.” Treacy said he was becoming more confident in his ability to impact games but there was plenty of room for growth. “It’s just the ability to get to as many contests as I can, try and work my man into the ground and beat him back the other way, or drag him up the ground and try and get him lost,” Treacy said. “But it’s not just that. I try and do a lot of work early as well at ground level. I feel like I’ve got pretty good skills for a big guy and have been able to impact on ground level as well.”

Fremantle Dockers star Josh Treacy reveals inner workings of forward trio with Pat Voss and Jye Amiss

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