Fremantle have had a very successful launch for their new range of supporter merchandise - purple sleeping caps, with a very laid back win over the hapless Western Bulldogs. You could hear the school kids behind the goals doing their handclap cheering routine for most of the first half as the two teams went through the motions with the teams kicking just a few goals between them. Luckily Matthew Pavlich's awesomeness couldn't be contained by a defensive game plan for that long against such a sucky opposition and he exploded at the start of the third quarter, kicking three goals and getting involved in two more to break the game open. At that point Fremantle went back to selling sleepwear and cruised home for a 38 point win as they try and set up a charge at the finals. Meanwhile the Bulldogs will now make a decision whether to fly back to Melbourne or just kick on to Bali now.
While a lot of teams had been looking forward to the June bye for a rest and a chance to reset for the run to the finals, Fremantle had been looking a bit further to July. July was effectively bye month for Fremantle. With games against the likes of Melbourne, Other Sydney and Poor Adelaide it was a classic series of phone-it-in games that would put Fremantle back in the eight and ready to storm home into the finals.
Th first week of the bye month was a game against one of the many dud clubs keen to focus on their west-ness, in particular the one with the Bulldog on their jumper. Presumably a once proud club, the Bulldogs were languishing at the bottom of the ladder, only being held up by the Gold Coast and Fremantle's other bye teams and most at the ground viewed the day as an exercise in percentage building.
But the players had been looking forward to their bye month for quite a while. It had been a long, sometimes grueling, season and they'd pencilled this week in for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Laid back and carefree, they kicked the ball back and forth at a pace that could have been described as pedestrian, assuming the pedestrian was carrying heavy shopping and trying to lay low because they'd seen someone across the street that they'd prefer not to bump into. ...Read More