Fremantle had barely had time to cover Michael Barlow’s leg cast with swear words and crudely drawn pictures of male genitalia before they were forced onto an aeroplane and shipped off to Victoria to play Richmond. While it was a bit of a annoyance for Fremantle, the locals were very excited. They’d won three games in a row after barely winning since the war and were pleased as punch. Fremantle, of course, were well aware of the quality of those sides Richmon had beaten, or the lack there of, and weren’t particularly concerned.
What did worry them though was that, with the carry on about the Tigers, Fremantle flying in and beating Richmond was going to be like Father Christmas coming down your chimney, eating your biscuits, drinking your beer then stealing your Christmas tree and setting fire to your house while you sleep - then leaving socks and underpants in your Christmas stocking.
So they took a low key approach to the game and hoped to be out of town with the 4 points before anyone knew what had happened. Some were suggesting they played it a little too low key when they went in without a defender over 6 foot. Many more were agreeing when Jack Riewoldt had a goal in the first minute.
But attention turned from the back line to the forward line very quickly. It seemed the entire Fremantle attack had taken a pre-match swig from the wrong Powerade bottle. While everyone at Richmond knows you don’t touch the stuff marked ‘Property of Ben’ the Freo players come from Perth so had no idea he got up to anything untoward. With 8 posts to aim at, and spotted dinosaur blocking them all, their kicking efficiency wasn’t up to their usual standard.
Eventually Stephen Hill was roughed up in the goal square and Fremantle managed a major to take the lead.
It was a short lived lead though, with the two sides locked in a tight tussle where Richmond would take the ball forward and jag a goal from one of the pockets or over their head, then Fremantle would return the favour, taking the ball down their own end, then giving the goal umpire a good cardio work out before eventually finding the right two posts to kick between.
But as Ben’s special tonic started to wear off, Freo started to wrestle back control of the game. Aaron Sandilands got over his phantom midfielder issue, where he would tap the ball to where Michael Barlow would normally be, Pav worked out how to pick up a football without tripping over it and Alex Silvagni slowly pulled down Jack Riewoldt’s pants.
They put through three goals in a row to take a commanding lead - or at least what looked like a commanding lead. As is tradition, when Fremantle started to build a bit of momentum, the umpires get their whistles out - handing the Tigers a couple of goals before the siren and dragging Freo’s lead down to 4 points at quarter time.
It had been a frantic first quarter, with Richmond playing out of their skins and Fremantle wasting more chances than the notroirous Being There Murderer that terrorised Peter Sellers look-a-likes in the eighties. There were also a few heavy hits, with the Mayor of Mandurah being unceremoniously dumped off the ball - and still staggering around like Graham Polak crossing the road. But Mark Harvey wasn’t too worried. He knew they’d straighten themselves as the game wore on and was still confident the game would be wrapped up so he could knock off early and watch the other Riewoldt’s comeback match on the tv out the back.
He’s a very astute coach, Mark Harvey. The siren sounded to start the second quarter and a couple of kicks later Kepler Bradley was celebrating his first goal of the night. A few more of them and it would be time to start calculating percentage.
Of course, that theory relied on the premise that Richmond would stop kicking freak goals from any position they liked. Every time they took it forward, Fremantle’s cobbled together defence would flock to Riewoldt, leaving everyone else free to try to win themselves a car by kicking the Goal of the Year.
Something needed to be done so Adam McPhee stepped up. McPhee’s always been of the Chicago school of thought and, after they put Ballantyne in the hospital, he decided to put three of theirs in the morgue. With one flex of his hip, he set of a chain reaction of chaos that had the ground splattered with yellow and black.
As he stepped over the bodies to clear the ball, Fremantle looked set for an easy goal but amazingly, Hasleby, who’s a good mark for his size, picked out the hot dog vender in the back row of the left pocket and misse an easy shot on goals. Richmond used the row of ambulances as cover to run the ball down the ground to kick a goal and take the lead.
Matthew Pavlich doesn’t care for losing. So he quickly took control of things and dobbed a goal from eighty odd metres out to reclaim front spot. They followed that one up with another Kepler Bradley goal square special, reading the ball off Sandilands’ fist so well you’d almost think he was a ruckman himself, then snapping it off the outside of his boot to claim the honorary title of The New Barlow.
Freo went into the half time break pretty pleased with everything. While they would have liked to have the game sewn up by now, Richmond had thrown some decent footy at them to stay in the game, so they were happy to play out the game and see the Tigers off in the second half for a comfortable win.
They were half right. Freo went into the third quarter looking comfortable. Winning was proving a bit more difficult.
The Tigers were unsure of the place in the world and had come out, hopped up on caffeine with an eye to actually winning the game. Fremantle came out with the vibe Paul Haslebly gives off when he gets up to a slow jog.
The Tigers hit back at Freo, knocking out Michael Johnson and giving Crowley a send off as he went of to have his shoulder re-attached. Then they started working on the scoreboard. Riewoldt kicked one when McPhee was deemed to have played on for raising his eyebrow; Matt White dobbed one from a position Freo thought would be safe to concede him a mark; and Riewoldt kicked another goal when, for the first time of the night, no one was standing on him.
Meanwhile Ryan Crowley’s Coleman Medal odds plummeted after he showed that his five straight goals from the week before were not going to be a consistent feature of his game - and he was one of the better efforts in front of goal for the Dockers.
When the three quarter time siren sounded, Freo hadn’t kicked a goal for the quarter (not for lack of aiming) and they weren’t in front. For half the side is was a throwback to years gone by but for the other half, it was something they’d never experienced before.
Mark Harvey wasn’t happy anymore - and it wasn’t just because the Etihad Stadium staff cut off his supply of Diet Coke. They’d stopped tackling, they’d stopped harassing, barely any Richmond players had been turned into human penetrometers but worst of all, he’d gone in light on defenders with a plan to kicking a big score and the forwards had made him look stupid with shots on goals being sprayed like Brendan Grylls recalling his shark sighting off the shore of Scarborough at sunset on Sunday night, over a Chardonnay and a satay scallop supper.
Still, there was a quarter to play and they were only seven points behind. A quick kick out of the middle, a couple of straight kicks and they’d break the backs of the Richmond players, then cruise home for the win.
Unfortunately Richmond had a similar idea and Fremantle’s task was quickly turned into three or four straight kicks. They regrouped in the centre and started again.
This time it all went to plan. An unfathomably clever tap out of the air from Morabito landed in Matt deBoer’s hands, who was just running past to get a drink. Stunned by Morabito’s skills, deBoer made sure he did him justice, streaming down the ground then getting the ball into the hands of Kepler Bradley.
Kepler dobbed his third and Fremantle started their charge.
They went from one bit of brilliance to another as the Dockers started to show why they are perched up in the top four. Lighting quick hands from Paul Hasleby, so quick that they required Hawkeye to prove he’d actually made contact with the ball, got the footy to Mundy. Mundy quickly moved it on to Stephen Hill who paused for a moment then unleashed his full awesomeness on the Tigers.
He ducked under a tackle, sold a dummy, threw in a blind turned for free, jumped over a Richmond player who’d fainted from a dizzy spell watching; then he steadied, took a deep breath then drilled the goal.
The Richmond players were worried. The Richmond supporters were scared. There was only one thing that was going to stop Fremantle now....their total lack of tall defenders.
A long bomb into the Richmond forward line saw three kids and a paper mache Luke McPharlin thrown by Hayden Ballantyne go up against Jack Riewoldt. Riewoldt didn’t even notice them. He brought down the ball, kicked the goal and the Fremantle crack unit had some more work to do.
A crack unit is where Michael Johnson does some of his best work (although technically it was a semi-detatched flat). Free on the wing, he scooped up the footy, looked up to see Pavlich alone in the goal square but he didn’t feel safe that Pav could mark it, kick it, or pick it up without tripping over, so he went it alone - magnificently slotting it through to bring the margin back to 2 points.
True to form, the Dockers abandoned their flirtation with goal kicking and levelled the scores with a couple of singles.
It seemed like such an easy task. Kick a goal...or a point and take the lead and then watch Richmond crumble. They’d fought a tough hard game, they just needed to finish it off with their superior skills, their professionalism, their attention to detail...
oh bugger, Ballantyne walked over the interchange gate too early.
Richmond got a free goal under a very poorly thought out rule and Fremantle were gone. The Tigers kicked a couple more in the few minutes remaining and the Dockers were left to fly home thinking of all the chances they missed that could have won them the game...and sneak a smile knowing that the Eagles now certainties to win the wooden spoon.