Fremantle star Nat Fyfe spent his team’s entire win over St Kilda sitting on the bench as the sub because of concerns surrounding a calf injury he reported after the half-time warm up.

Fyfe was playing his fourth game of the season and third as sub, but didn’t spend one second on the field as the Dockers beat St Kilda by 12 points.

The dual Brownlow medallist has had a frustrating year with knee and hamstring injuries, and his season took another twist after reporting calf concerns following the half-time break.

“It came up to the box early in the third quarter that he had some calf awareness,” coach Justin Longmuir said.

“He tried to warm up at half-time, did some run throughs and had some awareness in his calf. I’m not sure whether we could have put him on if we had an injury, but since we didn’t have an injury and we didn’t have any players really flagging, the safe option was to leave him out of the game.”

Longmuir didn’t speak to Fyfe about the injury during the game but said the former captain had not shown any signs of the problem during the week.

There was an expectation that Fyfe would come on to use his power at stoppages given the Dockers were getting well beaten in clearances.

Fyfe needs to continue to play to find a clear role in the team and build match fitness. Longmuir said the strange nature of the injury was a worry.

“It’s a bit of a concern of course. We’ll see how he pulls up (on Monday) and get it scanned if we need to. We’ll see where it takes us but from what I understand it is pretty minor and we didn’t have to bring him on,” he said.

“It’s a bit of a random one. It’s a first for me.”