 | Fremantle got in trouble with the WA Water Corporation this week. Chris Connolly spent his Easter break with the hammer and nails constructing a 20 foot wide barrel and left the hose running as he filled it with water. Quite a hefty fine and a stern dressing down later, Chris filled with barrel with fish, gave each of the players a shot gun and they spent the week training to beat the Eagles. | | If you live within a few thousand kilometres of Subiaco, you've probably heard how awesomely awesome the awe inspiring Eagles midfield is. Yes, they’ve truly carved up Shane O’Bree and Simon Phillips in their recent titanic struggles against a sobering up Swans side and the hodophobic wooden spoon favourites. Now a lot of people will tell you that you can only beat the Eagles if you can stop their awesomely awesome midfield. Those are the same sort of people who refuse to admit that Fremantle own the Eagles and have convincingly beaten them at every outing in recent memory. There's a reason you keep hearing about how awesomely awesome the Eagles midfield is. It's because that's all they've got. Aside from the odd game against Richmond, when one of their "forwards" bounces through more than 1 goal, you won't get any comment on what a great forward line the Eagles possess, or how solid their defense is (unless you're listening to a red head curtain salesman). That's why the team with the most awesomely awesome midfield ever put together in the history of ball sports, have averaged a winning margin of less than three goals over the past two years. Stacking the centre and replacing your shaven monkey with a shaven gorilla as your key forward (and a poorly shaven one at that) can only take you so far. At some point you're going to need to work on constructing a football team if you want to dominate. | | So, much like the quality of character of their players, their professionalism, team unity, the honesty of the club and Chris Judd's reasons for shaving his head; the fact that you need to stop their midfield to win is a myth.
Too many clubs waste all their energy trying to stop the Eagles in the centre. All you have to do is curb them slightly, drag them down to just awesomely great and pick up the three goals you need to beat them by having a better forward line and a better defense - or in Fremantle's case you can completely pants them by having a dominant forward line and a water tight defense.
Luckily, the job has been made even easier by the Eagles self destruction after the Grand Final. Most Fremantle supporters have been able to see the place unraveling for years now but, for a few days in March, even the most one eyed, died in the cashmere wool Eagles supporter had the veil removed from their eyes and saw the seedy underbelly of a club that prides itself on being able to delude its own supporters.
Over the summer they lost the man they held up on a squeaky clean pedestal and threw rose pedals at his wheel as drove past in his $200,000 Mercedes. It turns out he wasn't the boy next door who loved his and everyone else's grandmother and sometimes grinned cheekily because he'd snuck an extra ginger nut from the bikky tin while no one was looking. He was actually a hard core amphetamines addict who grinned because he was hopped up on goof balls and was picturing himself on a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
When he got so bad that even the West Coast Eagles couldn't hide his addiction, they had to ship him out of the country to an intensive rehabilitation clinic costing around about the yearly income for the average football supporter. The end result saw them lose their best player and severely damaged the awesomeness of their awesomely awesome midfield.
Chad Fletcher is the other of their awesomely awesome midfielders they used to consider the equal of the Awesome Foursome at Brisbane (no one has ever quite worked out which of Vossy's little toes Chad was supposed to be) who they'll be without on Saturday night. As seems to be a regular problem for him, no one is quite sure what's happened to Chad. Apparently the club embarked on a corporate foreign exchange program of sorts. They sent their doctor overseas and they picked up a new medico from Nevada. Chad had some scans done on his knee in February but they don't seem to have come back yet. So the club have decided to wait, just in case it's related to a chicken pox vaccine he had as a kiddie.
Down to just Daniel Kerr, who's managed to shrug of his pre-season drug issues and put himself into Brownlow favouritism with Ben Cousins like hard running, impressive endurance and seemingly complete lack of fear. He'll be hard to stop but should be able to be curbed by a few quiet words in his ear from Matthew Carr and a constant barrage of unrelenting abuse from Josh.
Chris Judd has been racking up the stats but he's been looking like a man who's started to realise all he has to do is get a few kicks and they'll pat him on the back even if they don't go to anyone. Another game like last week and he can't be far away from a hard hitting Robert Walls column claiming he's doing too many tv advertisements. Just send some wide receivers out to collect his miskicks and he may as well be wearing a purple jumper.
Unless you subscribe to the theory that Andrew Embley is any good, who, by all accounts, goes down like a sack of horse chaff, it leaves Fremantle over stocked with taggers - and that's assuming Troy Cook doesn't see just how many ways there are to make someone flatline.
Ryan Crowley, Steven Dodd, Josh Carr, Josh Carr's brother Matthew are considered some of the top blanket men in the country (not to be confused with the bag men who, for some reason, are still hanging around Subiaco Oval) but they're not who the fans will leave talking about.
Let's face it, 45,000 people are going to Subiaco Oval to see Matthew Pavlich compete with Chris Tarrant to see who can kick the most goals. If any Eagles supporters happen to sneak into the game, they'll be a bit shocked to find out a forward can take a contested mark and kick a goal in the same piece of play. Tarrant and Pavlich are sitting in the top 10 goal kickers for the season, both well on the way to the magical ton.
Pav took the honors in Round but Taz fought back last week and managed to tie with the Freo captain. Tarrant was so good that Pavlich had to bring out a miracle goal, soccering over his head, selling a dummy despite the ball being in mid-air and then reverse snapping the ball from the goal square. It was so good, it blew the AFL judges minds and they couldn't include it in the goals of the week for fear of causing heart failure in the wider population due to over excitement.
They've kicked all their goals so far against teams with two of the best defenders of the past decade while this week they'll be up against the football equivalent of the punch line in an Irish invention joke. Pav will be dobbing them from the centre square, Tarrant will be taking hangs in the goal square, Sandilands will get in on the action with his new trick of backing back into any two bloke standing next to each other, Dean Solomon will continue his transformation from tough guy midfielder to goal sneak with a few Jeff Farmer like derby specials and Paul Hasleby will spend the day racking up kicks before wandering down to kick a handful to get himself on the news that night.
And that'll be before they've even had time to cross down to Lachy Reid on the boundary to ask him how many Eagles players have lost their lunch because of "hard running". By the time the game is over, Eagles supporters will have realise just how good footy can be and will get onto Directory Assistance on the car phone in the Range Rover to find out how they can sign up with the dominant club in town.
If you've got a job in the Freo membership department you might want to start working on an excuse to skip work on Monday. They’ll be coming from everywhere.
The Teams
You Be Chris
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