FREMANTLE coach Mark Harvey believes his club has a bad reputation based on a handful of undisciplined players, but has thrown his support behind Dean Solomon.

Even though Solomon is now unavailable to play until round two next season after copping an eight-week suspension for striking Geelong's Cameron Ling, Harvey wants him to stay at Fremantle and will keep him involved for the rest of 2008.

"He'll train with the group and try and show some leadership at training in and around the club. He's a guy that's very much revered among his teammates," Harvey said.

"He's had a pretty good year on the back of what's been an ordinary year for the football club. He has stood up in a number of games and he has a future at this club."

Harvey has known Solomon for a long time and has the utmost respect for him and has been disappointed with some of the things he has had to deal with since the incident.

"He's obviously been affected by it, so has his family for that matter. I could talk a lot about what happens beyond just Dean and his family, but I won't comment on that," Harvey said.

"I remain private on those sorts of issues, but put it this way, a lot of things have happened since that particular incident. It's not something you want on your résumé."

Solomon has now fronted the tribunal six times since arriving at Fremantle and with Jeff Farmer, Josh Carr and Heath Black having horrendous tribunal records in recent years. Harvey believes it is that handful that is giving the rest of the side a bad reputation.

"I think the team suffers from that because we've got three or four players who quite regularly get cited or are up for report. We need to keep educating those guys in order for them to stop that opinion of the club being so widespread," he said.

"We need to constantly educate them through this era of change of what is accepted in football. [Glenn] Archer, and those guys, the way they played the game, taking the game to where it is now, those sort of combatant type of players who have been highly regarded in this game, are being phased out."

Harvey is also a little concerned that the direction the game is heading will eventually lead to hard-at-it ball players needing to be indecisive in how they attack the ball.

"We can't control the moments that present itself in the game and how players handle that. As I've said, there are a lot of penalties that have come into the competition in the last five or 10 years that have drastically changed the way players can behave and sometimes that takes time to develop different ways," he said.

"What we don't want is players playing with too much indecision in the game because of the new rules and restrictions on what they can and can't do."