This was going to be awkward. When the Fremantle members last met the players on mass, things ended on a pretty good note. The range of emotions stretched from deranged mania to open weeping as the Freo faithful enthusiastically congratulated their team on winning a Preliminary Final, before giving them a jolly good send off for their trip to Melbourne where they were scheduled to play the Hawthorn Football Club in the bloody Grand Final.
Things went well after that. There was cheering, streamers, parades, a national anthem and then several hours later it all turned bit ordinary for the simple purple folk in Melbourne, and those back home. No one has really spoken about it since.
It’s not like they could avoid running into the players at this thing, they were all standing just out there in the middle. It was unavoidable. So how were the Fremantlians to handle the inevitable confrontation?
Do they risk the accusations of accepting mediocrity with the heinous act of clapping the losing side? Do they boo them in vocal representation of their disappointment in Nat Fyfe’s ability to kick a goal and Hayden Ballantyne’s ability to stand up right?
Do they just pretend nothing happened, avoid eye contact and hope that the Gold Coast take their attention before the silence lingers too long?
The rain made it easy to keep a safe distance but it also gave the reunion a familiar feel. A light rain, a swirling breeze, it was eerily similar to that fateful day in late September. The memories, buried under a summer of cricket, shark warnings and melted Paddle Pops ruining white shorts, came flooding back. The pain hadn't lessened any.
When the footy kicked off and the Fremantle players looked flat footed, then lost their ability to kick straight, it was like a cruel joke where some deranged millionaire was forcing the Freo supporters to sit through a re-enactment of the Grand Final.
The Dockers had no idea how to deal with the conditions. The last time most of them had actually seen rain was probably the bloody Grand Final, and wind that doesn't blow consistently from the south west has always been taken as an abomination to God from the people of Fremantle. The Gold Coast didn't seem to mind it though, they put on two goals and their supporter back in Queensland must have been thinking she'd jumped on a winner.
Things weren't getting any less awkward for the Freo supporters, although there were a few in the crowd who were leaning towards letting the Fremantle players know they were there (mostly the ones sitting upstairs in the shelter) with a gentle bit of booing.
Thankfully Ryan Crowley managed to change the narrative and kicked a goal so straight he could have used it to shave...if shaving had ever occurred to him.
The weather didn't get much better but Fremantle did. They threw a new found enthusiasm at the footy, rushing it forward where they could unleash the triple trap of Walters, Ballantyne and chaos. Free kicks have been outlawed for yappy short blokes and people with neck tattoos so it was tough going for the two but chaos did well for itself, with Mzungu and Johnson jailing one each while the Suns stood around scratching their heads.
As the sky continued to darken, Michael Walters made the most of his high visibility boots and somehow got a wet ball to travel 80 metres in a straight line, taking extra care to make it spin counter clockwise to avoid any spray getting in the goal umpire's eyes.
When quarter time came around, the awkwardness had start to subside and, like old friends, everyone fell back into familiar habits - the players kicking straight and running amok, the supporters cheering on the players and complaining about the state of Subiaco Oval and the price of the “food” featuring it's name.
Even though the margin was only a couple of goals, Fremantle looked set for a comfortable win but Ross Lyon had an important message. He knew that the Gold Coast players were very talented and, while they might be in for a few lean years, their future was bright. He didn't care for that. So the message was passed onto the Fremantle players to do what they could to make that future a little less bright.
There was nothing nuanced about their attack on the Gold Coast players. It was a simple philosophy: it's hard to become a champion footballer if you can't walk or stand. Fremantle showed no pity as they savaged the young and bald alike. They smashed them in the centre (not in any statistical sense), they crushed them in the backline (no candy was present) and they mowed the lawn with them up forward (like a dull rusty push mower). There was no room for any explosions of pace, nor time for any displays of fancy skills. All the quarter lacked was a pile of mud in the centre square and a few blokes without teeth and it would have been a throwback to the old days of the VFL (except played between a team from a Western Australian port and a Queensland holiday resort).
Much like the old VFL days, there was surprisingly little football on display and a goal each had the two sides split by a couple of goals at halftime.
It was all hot milo and warm showers at the long break (of course, because he didn't want to appear soft, Ross made the boys drink Malt Milo) as the players took some respite from the constant drizzle. Ryan Crowley took a brief moment to look wistfully at his zinc cream before refocusing himself on the task of making Gary Ablett's life slightly more unpleasant than it usually is. The rain had made Crowley's job more difficult than usual, as it masked the tears falling from Gary Jr's eyes, traditionally an important feedback mechanism for the Freo tagger. He's a fighter though, and headed back on for another half of testing the strength of Gary Jr's tear ducts.
But as important as Gary's feelings were, the Fremantle players were more concerned about the scoreboard. No so much out of any fear of losing but they'd gotten a bit of a taste for this top of the ladder business. They'd spent a week there and they'd liked it and, as big as Fremantle's percentage was after the humiliation of Collingwood in Round 1, there were plenty of rigged fixtures about that could see the Dockers fall as low as second, possibly third. That just wouldn't do.
So, as soon as the siren sounded, some believe it was slightly before it, Michael Walters took a grab on the boundary line and hooked a goal from the Tofu-dog van, to start the process of percentage building. It was actually a slower process than usual, as if kicking with the wind felt like cheating and they subconsciously held back. That and Pavlich was playing like he'd done some kind of Freaky Friday style switch with Quinten Lynch.
Mzungu and Barlow got a couple of handy ones but the weather and the number of Gold Coast player's limbs left lying around had the Freo forwards struggling to convert and they went into the last change with a relatively small 25 point lead.
Unlike the Gold Coast, the rain refused to give up in the last quarter but Fremantle seemed to gradually be adapting to their new water based existence. Another few quarters and there was a good chance that Michael Barlow would sprout some gills (then swim into Manatee and break his leg). So operation Massive Percent forged ahead at a better rate.
Danyle Pearce started the scoring when he made a mockery of the conditions (just after Stephen Hill made a mockery of the holding the ball rule) drilling one from what he's describing as a few steps outside the centre circle, Stephen Hill burst from a collective of Suns players to kick one from what he's now describing as about 10 metres further out than Pearce's, Tom Sherridan was given the honour of being on the end of the best kick to a forward in the history of football and did it justice with a goal; and Paul Duffield got the ultimate defenders revenge when he swooped on a Gold Coast kick out and sent the ball back over the goal umpire's head.
By the time the time keeper got out of his chair to throw the switch and put the Gold Coast out of their misery, Fremantle were a very handy 48 points up and looking very comfortable at the top of ladder where they are sure to spend the next 23 weeks looking for a good spot to fly their premiership flag from. Meanwhile the Gold Coast will head back to Queensland and hope they’ve enough body parts to assemble a team of players for their next game.