There are a lot of things in life that bring a great deal of enjoyment but really shouldn’t. Sneaking up behind someone and smashing an Easter Egg over their head, watching Glen McGrath scon an enthusiastic Irishman on the head and generally anything that involves a pummel horse and a bloke’s groin. But there other things you have every right to enjoy – things like beating the Eagles in a derby. Taking on the over indulged, sanctimonious, up themselves bastards, turning their bizarrely delusional self image upside down and shoving their superiority complex down their well lubricated chardonnay holes. It’s a win for right.

As respected football writer and commentator Robert Walls would tell you, it’s good triumphing over evil. Nothing could be more pure. A Fremantle win over the Eagles is celebrated in the Heavens.

But because evil, by its very nature, can’t stand to see good triumphing, it tries to corrupt the system by getting into the hearts of average, slow witted, weak willed, generally quite unattractive and, for some strange reason, unable to tan no matter how many days they spend training in the sun man. We call these people umpires.

Every Derby they rock up with some notion that Fremantle are there to cause trouble and butter wouldn’t melt in the Eagles mouths, even if that butter had been licked off a spoon they were heating with a lighter. So, it was hardly so very surprising when the umpires started blowing their whistles early and pointing backwards for Eagles players to take their free kicks.

As Fremantle carried Antoni Grover from the ground, mysteriously injured off the ball, Steve Armstrong put through a goal from a fifty metre penalty because Solomon made the mistake of contesting the football.

They weren’t so fifty metre penalty happy when Matthew Pavlich was punched in the head during the marking contest but, it was Pav’s first free kick for the season so he was pleased just to hear the umpire say his name. He dobbed the goal regardless and the scores were level.

Back in the middle and it was the men in green doing all the work for the Eagles once again. One umpire picked off Solomon for nudging his man into the square then Chris Judd fell on top of Josh Carr and was helped up by the umpire and given the rarely used eighty metre penalty. Seaby took the kick, the goal was a given and the Eagles took the lead.

It was a terrible start to the game for Fremantle. Not because they were playing badly but because they’d come to play a Derby, a rough, intense, hard fought game of football. The umpires weren’t going for it. They seemed to have decided it was to be a  nice contestless bit of a run and jump that would look pretty on the highlights reel but have no substance to it.

That’s how they started. With John “Never Floods” Worsfold employing his traditional Derby Tsunami, there wasn’t going to be anything pretty about the game. When they realised that, the switched camps.   Suddenly they put the whistles away and it was harder to find a free kick than an Eagles supporter who didn’t think the AFL’s three strikes policy was to blame for Ben Cousins’ drug addiction.

It seemed like good news for the Dockers. Their tackling was magnificent and soft decisions would spoil a great skill of the game. If an Eagle had the courage to go after the ball, he was set upon by at least two Fremantle players. Like a bit of cheesecake to the cast of The View, they went straight to the hips. The Fremantle supporters were shouting ball so often and in such rapid succession the sound crew for Foxtel thought they were picking up the Crazy Frog ringtone over the effects mic. But the umpires had changed their tune (much like everyone wishes the clowns with the Crazy Frog ringtones would). Not only weren’t they paying the soft kicks, they weren’t paying the blatantly obvious ones either. Chris Judd normally requires written notification that a tackle was laid, endorsed by a Justice of the Peace before the umpires will award a kick against him. This time around he seemed it was going to take a Papal Decree before they’d ping him.

What made life even tougher for Fremantle was the treatment their forwards were getting. With the things being done to Pavlich and Tarrant, parents were having to cover their children’s eyes every time the ball went into the Dockers forward line.

Fremantle fought on though, peppering the goals but, with Woosha’s flooding and Justin Longmuir’s boyish good looks, it was hard work find a target that wasn’t being accosted by at least one the Eagles defender.

Eventually Fremantle over committed to attack and the Eagles were able to rebound, move the ball forward and get it in front of goals where the umpires brought their whistles back out. Hansen somehow dragged himself away from the Greek-style action going on in his defensive end, and kicked a goal.

A goal after the siren from Daniel Kerr didn’t help the Dockers cause either, taking them into the first break 3 goals down but playing the better footy.

While the oranges were handed around to the Fremantle players and the buckets to the Eagles, their coaches would have told them to stay the course. If the big Fremantle forwards could start taking some marks and kicking a bit straighter, the hard work down the ground would start to pay off. If the Eagles could continue flooding, bottling the game up, getting a free ride from the umpires and generally contributing to the inevitable destruction of Australian Rules Football, they might sneak over the line in the controversial dying minutes of the game.

When they ran back to their spots, the Dockers looked to have turned the corner. As expected, the first centre bounce ended with a free kick being paid to the Eagles but with their ferocious attack on the ball, Freo didn’t take long to win it back. A monster kick from Shaun McManus brought the ball into Fremantle fifty but the Dockers could only manage a point…that was until the lack of discipline from the Eagles boiled over and Stenglein snotted Josh Carr in the goal square. Josh kicked the goal and Freo closed the gap.

A rare mistake from the Fremantle defenders saw David Wirrpanda kick a goal against the flow but Fremantle were quick to reply when Aaron Sandilands brought the crowd to life with a screamer over the top of Staker and kicked a beauty from forty metres out.

Another crowd favourite, Troy Cook, got the crowd out of their seats when he had a ping from 70 metres out. Not known for his long kicking, even less known for his accurate kicking, Cook let fly with a drop punt a few steps clear of the centre square. With the Eagles backs concentrating on pushing Sandilands out of the contest, the ball sailed over the top of the lot of them, bounced in the square and through for a goal.

Fremantle were winding them in. The Freeeeee-ooooooo chant rang out, Troy Cook ran into the centre to ruffle a few feathers and the panicky sweat started to wash the oil of the West Coast players’ limbs.

But instead of finishing the job, the Freo players stepped back a bit with an eye on the siren, forgetting they weren’t actually in front yet. A kick that looked suspiciously out of bounds was marked by Steven Armstrong in the “pocket”.  Somehow he jagged the goal from the front seat of the St John’s ambulance and, when the siren sounded a few seconds later, the Eagles still had a 14 point lead.

The third quarter looked like it was going to be the time for Fremantle to make their move.  Everyone had settled into the pace of the game. Fremantle had the Eagles play makers covered. Judd was becoming a liability for the Eagles and Kerr was getting a taste of what it’s like to play without the cover of two Brownlow medallists. The undermanned Fremantle defence had whatever the Eagles were passing off as a forward line covered and the forwards were looking ready for an all out blitz. All the Dockers needed to do was come to grips with the oily football and pick their skills up slightly and it was going to be 6 Derby wins in a row.

But just as things seemed to be swinging in Fremantle’s favour, the umpires pulled out another terrible decision. Their worst for the night. Steven Dodd, recently suspended for stepping on someone’s foot, was penalised for deliberate out of bounds for being nearest the football when it trickled over the line. A bad decision made worse by the fact that they’d let the other side get away putting it over the boundary line all night.

The result was a goal for the Eagles and 45,000 people aghast.

Always the steadying rock, Matthew Carr got one back with a one handed miracle mark in the goal square and a straight kick but you got the feeling the umpires wanted to go home early and didn’t want a lot of traffic on the roads. Fremantle players were getting KO’d in the centre square, forwards were having things done to them that breached the Geneva convention and Eagles players were getting the sort of protection usually reserved for gay talkback radio hosts.

Lynch was given a free kick in the goal square because the umpires know he can’t get one on his own merits, then Embley soccered one through while Shane Parker was being restrained with what appeared to be some sort of taser device, off the ball.

The Fremantle supporters were out of their seats. They were outraged. They’d had a gutful. It was bodyline all over again. The booing was so intense; Chris Judd started making an acceptance speech. Someone had to do something or there was going to be West Coast Eagle style civil unrest.

But Fremantle is a family club and doesn’t condone the sort of activity you’ll see at an Eagles game, so the players took it upon themselves to restore the peace.

 

They started pushing their way through in spite of  the umpiring like John Howard through public opinion. It wasn’t easy but they knew they had the class to do it. They chipped the ball around, avoiding the flood and keeping clear of trouble, until Pav gave the word. Then Mundy let fly and Pav brought down a grab with 6 Eagles hanging off the back of him. The goal was a formality and Fremantle edged their way back.

Yet another ball up bypassed Aaron Sandilands when the umpire found a free kick no one could explain but all that did was get the rapidly improving Fremantle defence into the play quicker. They played it safe again, steering clear of trouble till they were ready to strike. Then Mundy moved into action again, this time bypassing Pav, to jailed one from the boundary line in a goal that could rival Matthew Pavlich for best goal in the history of ball sports.

The crowd had been placated now. The umpires hadn’t improved but Freo had lifted enough to put that out of the supporters’ minds. The just needed one more before three quarter time and they’d be on their way to Derby glory.

Shaun McManus marked the ball in the same spot David Wirrpanda had recklessly charged him all those years ago. This time though, he decided not to back himself for a miraculous goal, instead he went short to Tarrant. As Tarrant walked back to take his kick the siren sounded and that magical sound of 45,000 nervous murmurs filled the ground.  Tarrant wasn’t worried though. In fact, he went back a bit further just to test himself. 60 metres out, he hit the sweet spot on the ball and it sailed through for his first goal of the night. Fremantle were within two goals and it was game on.

As the players were given their final instructions from their coaches, the out of time Freeee-ooooo chant echoed around the ground. The atmosphere around the ground would have had the players’ hairs standing up on the backs of their necks or whatever part of Chris Judd still has hair left on it. Despite the Eagles pathetic tactics that could only be seen as an attempt to drive new Fremantle members away from the sport, it was set up for one of the classic Derby finishes. Clive Waterhouse would have been sitting up in his coffin (he’s not dead, his skills at building Ikea furniture is just very poor).

Fremantle looked fired up as they ran to their positions. The Eagles looked more like they were enthralled with all the wonderful colours they could see, but that’s for the AFL to deal with. As the ball was bounced, Fremantle took the ascendency, they moved it forward but ran afoul of the umps was again. As the Eagles ran the ball down the ground, it was  real pressure footy. Freo stuck their tackles but couldn’t get a decision to go their way. Eventually the ball spilled free and Steven Armstrong joined the long line of players who have kicked unbelievably  jaggy goals against Fremantle this season.

The pressure was back on the Dockers. The margin had drifted out to just over three goals and there was no sign of the game opening up for a last quarter goal kicking bonanza.

Hasleby kicked the reply, reminiscent of his match winning goal from the Derby a year earlier and Freo had the momentum once more. All eyes looked to the Fremantle forwards. Pav and Taz were due.

Shaun McManus got the ball out of the centre and went straight down the guts. Tarrant was getting his usual combination of illegal holding and hands in the back but knew he wasn’t going to get any protection from the men in green. He fought off one opponent, turned his attention to the second and did away with him as the ball came straight to his chest. Unfortunately Taz had had a quiet game and, being his first derby, he wasn’t aware just how oily the ball got after three and a half quarters of being around the Eagles. The ball slipped from his grasp, the Eagles stole the ball, botted it down the ground, the ball came off the side of Rowan Jones’ boot and the Eagles had another goal.

Time was running out for Freo now. They needed something special but they couldn’t take a trick. The oily ball, the unfriendly umpires and a strange phenomenon which saw Troy Cook and Shaun McManus pin pointing 40 metre passes and David Mundy and Luke McPharlin missing short targets. If they could just click for a few minutes they’d have this mob beaten.

But then Fremantle dropped their guard, Embley kicked back to back goals and the gate was shut. Ending Fremantle’s America’s Cup style hold on the Western Derby and leaving them languishing at the wrong end of the ladder for another week.