Apparently the Eagles picked up some sort of triangular cloth this year but when they came face to face with the real powerhouse in WA football a few weeks earlier...they ran away like scared little girls. The Eagles threw everything they had at the Dockers with little effect. The Eagles didn’t kick a goal for half the game and the game went down as the biggest pansting in Derby history.

West Coast v Fremantle
Sunday 27th August 2006
Subiaco Oval

Derbies are great. One of the best things about them is the tradition. Sure, some things change. John Worsfold used to run around trying to intimidate opposition players – now he runs around trying to intimidate opposition coaches. Glen Jakovich and Karl Langdon used to fly the Eagles flag high – now they are professional unbiased commentators for a well known radio station. Shaun McManus used to run around fearlessly chasing after the ball with his long blonde curls flowing in the breeze - now he runs around fearlessly chasing the ball with his medium length blonde curls flowing in the breeze. But it’s the things that have stayed the same that are making the Western Derbies one of the great events in WA sport.

Traditions like the smugness of the West Coast supporters, the abundance of Hungry Jacks and SGIO flags and playing Queen songs before the game; but one of the richest most respected of Derby traditions is the crucifixion of the Dockers by the umpires.

This Derby they out did themselves – the whistle had blown before the ruckmen even had a chance to get a hand on the opening bounce. Apparently the umpire had never seen Sandilands before and thought he was using some sort of illegal stilts, so he gave Cox a free kick. Even with a free kick, the Eagles had no way through the slick Fremantle defence and Roger Hayden was cruising around with the ball before you could say “perfect conditions for football”.

But the Dockers soon realised that this wasn’t going to be one of the walks in the park they’d taken in most of their past 7 consecutive wins. The Eagles had come to play and were playing with a finals like intensity (not so much a finals like intensity for one of their finals matches but something a good team, like Sydney, might play a final with).

It was a game of one percenters…hundreds of them. There were packs of players after every lose ball, tacklers at every turn, shepherds on every chase. It was a game for cool heads and those players susceptible to pressure were going to struggle. Cousins and Judd both missed easy goals in the opening minutes of the game.

It was the sort of day where the cream was going to rise to the top and at the five minute mark, the first signs of frothing started to show. Heath Black left his opponent bewildered when he used Aaron Sandilands to get into space. He bolted through the centre then let fly with his raking left foot into the waiting arms of Michael Johnson, alone in the forward line. Johnson wandered back behind the mark, took a few deep breaths and hushed the West Coast dominated crowd with a Murphyesque drop punt straight through the middle.

It didn’t sit well with the West Coast players so they puffed up their chests and tried to take things up a notch. They ran hard, moved the ball quickly but still couldn’t get through the Freo defenders. As the ball was rebounded back Freo’s way, the well mannered Eagles supporters cheered Jeff Farmer on as he ran the ball through the centre. He kicked it out in front of Ryan Crowley, Crowley steadied and jailed another one for Freo.

Someone dropped a pin in the front row. It was heard in Kalgoorlie.

The Dockers depth around the ground was showing. For all the Eagles hard work, they just didn’t have as many winners. Luckily though, they had mates in high places, and someone looked Chris Judd in the eye which is an automatic free kick. The Dockers were caught off guard (although they should have expected it really) and somehow Lynch ended up getting a kick. He snuck it through the goals and the Eagles had their first of the day.

Judd got another kick out of the centre when Josh Carr spoke his name out loud (bring your rocks along to Monday night training for the stoning) but once again the Eagles complete lack of ability outside of the centre square shone through. As the Dockers mopped up in defence, a booming kick from Aaron Sandilands had the Eagles scrambling to try and get hold of Pavlich’s jumper. They managed to hold him back but made the mistake of letting Jeff Farmer get loose. The Wiz danced around a couple of Eagles and slotted through goal number 3 off the ground.

The Eagles were in trouble and for once they knew it. They went into overdrive. Woosha cleared the bench and gave his boys all their pep-pills in one hit. It was like the opening five minutes of the game on fast forward. They were winning the ball out of the centre and getting it deep into their forward line putting the Freo defence under all sorts of pressure. They stood brave but, with the unrelenting attack and the umpires batting for the other side, they dropped their guard long enough for Judd, Butler and Staker to sneak though some quick goals.

The pressure was getting to Freo. They were starting to overcommit to the ball to try and go with the Eagles and it wasn’t working. Their cool demeanour was disappearing as all the fairytales the Eagles and their supporters like to tell about a Brisbane Lions like midfield was coming to life.  The crowd had found voice, the ball was starting to bounce the way of the Eagles players and the umpires were blowing the whistle so often it sounded like a rave party.  Fremantle needed to slug it out until the siren so they could regroup.

At least that was the plan, until Chris Judd managed to kick the ball out of bounds on the full. So, while the umpires were looking for a way to pin it on someone else, Peter Bell played on gave Headland the lace out sponsors logo away from the camera treatment (Johnny Worsfold can pay for his own Hungry Jacks this week) and Dessy dobbed a goal to take Fremantle into the first change 2 points behind.

It was shaping up to be a classic Derby. The Eagles had thrown everything they had at the Dockers in the first quarter and could still only manage to get a couple of points in front. If the Dockers could settle themselves, up the pressure on the big 3 and avoid breaking the ever increasing list of things you can’t do in the presence of Chris Judd, they’d be confident of having their noses in front at the end of the day.

But what the most people hadn’t realised was that Fremantle had been pacing themselves. While the Eagles played the opening quarter in top gear, Freo had been crushing along beside them in third. When the second quarter got going they shifted up.

Brett Peake was first to make a move after a quiet first term and bounced his way down the ground before chipping a 3 metre kick Peter Bell’s way. Bell took the ball, looked up and saw Des Headland on his own in the forward line. A pin point pass gave Dessy the ball and he took off before kicking the Dockers into the lead with a goal.

They started battering the pretty boys from up the road. The Peter Bell clones spread out around the ground and all of a sudden there was space everywhere. A bit of Michael Johnson goosification saw him loping through the centre with the ball before sending it the way of The Wiz. Somehow Farmer managed to mark the ball while Selwood gave him a full cavity search and, once he’d readjusted himself, dobbed the goal.

Jeff Farmer may have been walking a bit funny afterwards but he was certainly not done handing out some payback to Selwood. After getting on the end of a Brett Peak frozen rope in the pocket, Farmer pulled out a trick that he saves for the big occasions.

Knowing that everyone on the ground was expecting the reverse banana torpedo punt, Farmer pulled the kick at the last minute and centred it to one of the Peter Bell clones leading out from the square. Bell never looked like missing and the Dockers skipped three goals ahead.

The Eagles supporters didn’t know what to make of it. Their self image of the all powerful, unflappable kings of WA footy was once again fading before their eyes. So they did the only thing they knew how – they sat on their hands and mumbled bad things about Chad Fletcher under their breath. Meanwhile the dozen or so Freo supporters they’d let into the game let fly with the Freee-ooooo chant.

And, as the voices of those dozen people echoed around the ground, it seemed to summon the greatest passage of footy in the history of Western Derbies.

Heath Black’s raking left foot got the party started as he kicked the ball out towards Jeff Farmer at half back. The Wiz had Selwood and his rubber glove closing in on him so he leapt into the air and smashed the ball over his head into the path of Michael Johnson. Johnson plucked the footy out of the air, dodged around a couple of Eagles, throwing in a blind turn so he could get a look at their faces while he goosified them, then he handpassed off to a streak of white and purple that the slow motion replay has shown was Brett Peake. Peake started bouncing his way towards the goals, players desperately lunging in his direction but unable to even get close, then he sailed the ball over the goal umpire head for goal number 8.

Normally it would have brought the house down but with the Eagles crowd still in shock, the Dockers finished out the quarter in silence, going into the break 21 points up and not sure whether the crowd would still be there when they returned from the changerooms to start the third quarter.

Unfortunately they stayed. The offer of half priced chardonnay after half time and the lingering memory of a lucky win against Geelong had kept the Eagles supporters in their seats. More surprising was that the Eagles players had returned to the ground, most had tipped them to rip their jumpers off and run off in fear of what the second half might bring.

Fremantle, of course, were going nowhere. They had unfinished business and when Aaron Sandilands charged through Dean Cox to start the second quarter, that business wasn’t going to involve the Eagles doing much scoring.

The ball was in and bouncing around Fremantle’s forward line in the opening seconds. Pav had a ping but hit the post. The ball wasn’t long out of scoring range and when Troy Cook barrelled through half a dozen Eagles to dish out a handpass to Crowley in the goal square, the Dockers had stretched their lead to 5 goals.

Fremantle were running amok, the Eagles hadn’t scored since just before time on in the first quarter, how would they respond?

If you said “by letting Peter Bell get on the end of an Aaron Sandilands rain maker to kick a goal and double their score” you’d be spot on. It was turning into a route. The supporters had started to shuffle in their seats. It things kept going the way they were, it was going to take a lot more than a couple of glasses of cheap plonk for them to cope.

When Jeff Farmer was given a fifty metre penalty after a frustrated Ben Cousins tried to rough him up that was it for the Eagles supporters. Their whole distorted image of the world was being shaken up. Farmer passed it off to Josh Carr then Josh sent it back Jeff’s way.  He was only 10 metres out from goals  but he played it like he was fifty. He measured the run up, took his time and made sure every bloody Eagle supporter in the ground got a good look at him. Then he put the goal through to complete silence, raised his arms in the air, looked to the heavens, soaked it all up and walked off with a cheeky grin. The Eagles were done.

Heads were dropping, Range Rovers were driving off at alarming pace, Woosha’s stare of death had turned into a George W Bush stare of bewilderment.  They had no answers,  no ideas and from all appearances not a lot of talent.

Pav put through his first of the day to stretch the lead out to 45 which in Derby vernacular is known as going past the Waterhouse Mark of 7 goals. If for some reason The Wiz had miscalculated, once the Waterhouse Mark was reached, there was no way the Eagles could get back into the game. The freeeeee-ooooo chant went up and the stands started to clear.

A cameo from Paul Hasbely saw him dob another couple of goals and by three quarter time the Dockers were sitting pretty, 57 points in the lead.

A few easy goals while the Fremantle defenders were forming a conga line to kick off the celebrations saw the Eagles get their first goals since quarter time after the last break (even then it took some help from the umpires) but even with the Fremantle blokes dropping back into first gear they were still able to hold their own against the Eagles, finishing the game 57 points the better side, grabbing on to third spot on the ladder and sending chills down the spines of the 8 clubs left to challenge Freo for the flag in a weeks time.

Scores

West Coast 4.3 4.8 4.11 8.13 61 Fremantle 4.1 8.5 14.8 18.10 118

Goals

Fremantle   J.Farmer 4   P.Hasleby 2   M.Pavlich 2   R.Crowley 2   P.Bell 2   D.Headland 2   M.Johnson 1   T.Cook 1   J.Longmuir 1   B.Peake                 West Coast     B.Cousins 3   Q.Lynch 2   B.Staker 2   C.Judd 1

Clinton Wolf Medal Votes

Jeff Farmer 3 Peter Bell 2 Aaron Sandilands 1