Alex Pearce has declared he wants to remain as Fremantle captain next year, saying he has “unfinished business” with a maiden premiership still eluding the club.

Pearce, 29, has led the Dockers for the past two seasons after he succeeded dual Brownlow medallist Nat Fyfe at the start of 2023.

However, injuries restricted the star defender to just 15 games in 2024, including one of the last nine.

Star midfielders Caleb Serong and Andy Brayshaw have been ear-marked as potential future skippers, with both serving as Pearce’s deputies.

“It has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in my career but also one of the most rewarding,” Pearce told AFL.com.au.

“It is something I have reflected on quite a bit and just think about how privileged I am and how proud I am thinking back eight or 10 years ago when I had some significant injuries.

“I always had great leaders to play under in Pav (Matthew Pavlich), Dave Mundy and Fyfey (Fyfe) and a lot of other more experienced players and always cherished learning from them.

“It’s humbling now to hopefully be someone who our younger players are learning from how to be better leaders, better players and hopefully better people. We’ve got great young leaders, particularly with Andy and Caleb, we’ve created a good team.

“I’d like to still keep leading. I feel like the last couple of years there is unfinished business and I’d like to get to that premiership.

“But whenever the time comes when I’m no longer captain, I’ll be fitting in behind whoever he is and making sure I’m still contributing and giving us the best chance of winning that premiership.”

Only three players in Freo history - Peter Bell, Matthew Pavlich and Nat Fyfe - have captained the club for three seasons or more.

The Dockers finished 10th this year after losing the last four games of the home-and-away season to slip out of the eight.

It coincided with Pearce’s absence from the side after he broke his forearm against Gold Coast in round 15 and then suffered the same injury a month later in his first game back against Melbourne.

While Pearce said it was “a bit of a nightmare the way things ended”, the injury is now “100 per cent healed”.

“The arm is feeling good now. I’m back to full training and everything like that. It won’t be an issue,” he said.

“The tiny silver lining of us not making the finals is I got to give it more time to make sure it was 100 per cent healed.

“I was able to do that over the off-season and continue to run and train. Now we’re confident that it is 100 per cent healed and fine.”