Freezer was up there with one of my favourite Tigers of all time too Moi.
Losing Freezer not only meant we lost one of our best players in his prime, it really left a huge hole in our midfield which in the following decade we never fixed. We needed his tough no nonsense ballwinning ability and matchday leadership. Add Maxfield going to Sydney and too much of the workload was left to Knights, Cambo who were more classier outside types as well as Brodders.
Losing Freezer and Lambert in a matter of years really faarrked us over big time.
IMO if we had retained those two guys we would have had a decent shot at winning a flag around 95-97.
We were basically robbed of our only two natural in and under midfielders. Knights and Cambo were more reciever types and it showed up badly whenever we played a big game. They couldn't do the in and under work needed for us in the centre and together with being tagged out of the game it spelled the end of us. We had no one else that could do the work needed to clear the ball from the centre and we basically got polaxed by teams that had good hard midfields.
On Free, I don't think he would have ended up being a champion if he hadn't got injured but he would have definitely been a great.
Im my view a top 5 player in the last 20 years, together with the likes of Weightman, Campbell, Knights and Richo.
Dont know about a decent shot at the flag, but certainly would have made a big difference to the team. And he would have done a better job of fixing up Libber when Knights got hit than you know who.....