Fremantle packed their bags on Thursday morning and headed for the most horrible, putrid crap hole on Earth – Adelaide. They were faced with the daunting task of taking on the Crows in front of 40,000 rabid South Australians at the most hostile ground in the country to play their first ever final outside of Western Australia. Just to make matters worse, they’d had people in their ear all week telling them how much more intense finals matches were and how they would never be able to cope.
They all handled the anticipation in different ways. As the national anthem played, some looked like nervous school kids waiting outside the headmasters office, some looked like they’d just be given a rev up by a blue faced Mel Gibson and were about to charge the British…Peter Bell looked like he was waiting for a bus. Few knew what they were in for but all of the knew they had to be switched on and ready to play because the Crows were going to try and smash them off the paddock right from the opening bounce.
It was business as usual for the Carr brothers, picking a few fights before the siren but when the game started it was like an all in bar fight. Blokes were coming from everywhere to have a bash. If you picked up the footy you were fair game for a pile on. If you looked like you might have a passing interest in picking up the footy you were fair game for a pile on. It was finals footy and it really was a massive leap in pressure.
But despite their lack of finals experience, Freo took to the pressure like Gene Kelly to a rainy Hollywood set. They revelled in it.
The were going in hard, they gave the Crows nothing and if they dared take something they would cop a gut full of Troy Cook’s shoulder, a side full of Shaun McManus’s hip or a back full of Josh Carr’s knee.
They were navigating their way through the limited space like an oiled up Ben Cousins through butcher’s freezer. A cheeky little chip from Roger Hayden cleared the heads of a few flooding Crows and somehow landed square on the chest of Ryan Crowley. Creepy had no trouble kicking Freo’s first goal of their finals campaign.
They kept sucking down the pressure and spitting it back out on the Crows until eventually the Adelaide boys started to cower away from it. A huge bomb down the guts from Luke McPharlin was gobbled up by a backward diving Jeff Farmer who copped the full brunt of two Adelaide defenders as he hit the deck. Even that didn’t rattle him though and he settled himself before dobbing goal number two for Freo.
Despite the efforts of Adelaide to flood the ground, it was goals that were raining for Fremantle. Matthew Pavlich made a complete goose of Stevens to take what he made look an easy mark and then slotted through another Dockers goal from a tight angle. Heath Black followed that up with a beauty on the run from seventy three metres out.
The Fremantle fairytale was in full swing. They were rolling the Minor Runners-Up and were headed for Grand Final glory. The cement was in the mixer, the pole had been cut to length. All that was missing was the inevitable flag.
There’s was nothing the Crows could do to stop Freo either. The Dockers tackling was so ferocious that Adelaide players were going off the ground to have ribs taped up. The hands of the Freo defenders were so strong that planes were being diverted away from the ground in case Michael Johnson or Luke McPharlin brought down a light aircraft by mistake. The little blokes were throwing their bodies around like suicidal rag dolls. They were born to play finals footy.
The only blemish on the quarter was when Biglands jagged a goal after a lucky bounce. But it was nothing to worry about, Freo still went into the break with a 3 goal lead and looking strong, confident and ready to roll the South Australian bastards.
While the teams settled in to have an orange and discuss tactics during the quarter time break, the wind started to pick up. The gentle breeze Freo had been kicking with had whipping up into a gale.
But it was more than just a 10 goal breeze that Fremantle were kicking against when they ran back to position to start the second term. The umpires had had a meeting and decided they’d given Freo too many free kicks and were going to restore things to their natural order.
So, with a licence to scrag, the Crows started playing even tighter. The teeny tiny space that Fremantle had been navigating through so masterfully was gone and every time they tried to break through the centre they hit a wall of Crows. They still had their water tight defence and a three goal lead though so, what was looking to be a run away victory was going to have to become an old fashioned arm wrestle.
Freo tried to grind the Crows into the ground and test out that cutting edge, sport science condition of theirs. The tackled hard, they put numbers behind the ball and they gave away nothing. Adelaide got desperate and started trying to boot goals from outside fifty but weren’t getting with a Pav’s nose of the goals. That is, of course, until the umpire decided that he’d give Clarke a free kick in front of goals because Aaron Sandilands was really tall.
Then when one of their pot shots from outside fifty finally came off the Crows moved within a goal of the Dockers. Fremantle started getting nervous. No longer happy to sit back and hold back the Crows, they desperately looked for a gap to move the ball forward. They were hard to come by though. Noah Peak (wearing the meerkat skin boots this week) went for a run and had 11 bounces and actually lost 3 metres of ground. There was just no way past Adelaide.
Then Chris Connolly got on the phone to Mongolia for some advice. With all their experience at getting past massive walls they offered him some ideas, most of which would have been hard to use (catapulting burning oil drums at the opposition is frowned upon in modern football) but then they gave him an absolute sure fire winner – get Shane Parker in.
Fast gaining a reputation as a finals specialist, Parker ran the ball out of defence, got Troy Cook to clear a path for him, then unloaded into the forward fifty. Michael Johnson copped a fist to the head as he went for mark of the year for no reward but, as Rutten took off with the footy, The Wiz pounced. He wrapped him up in a tackled, scored a free, kicked a goal and carried the Dockers into the half time break with an 8 point lead.
With a handy lead and the wind at their backs, the third quarter was Freo’s chance to put the premiership back in premiership quarter. Another run like they opened the game with and the could fins themselves 30 points up with a quarter to defend and by nightfall they’d be sipping Pina Coladas at Victor Harbour as they planned their week off.
They started off magnificently. Moving the ball long and quickly. Ryan Crowley somehow managed to hide himself behind a pack of Crows players again, and this time the raking left foot of Heath Black picked him out and landed the footy in the middle of his chest. He played on from behind the goal line and picked out Jeff Farmer milling about in the pocket. The Wiz lined up from 15 metres out but the freak wind blew his kick off target.
With even The Wiz unable to harness the wind, the confidence of the Freo side started to wane. It was like finding out that Father Christmas hires look-a-likes to help him deliver the presents in highly populated time zones.
They battled on but the free flowing style of footy they started the quarter with had turned to a hard fighting scrap. So it was no surprise that the hardest fighting scrapper in the business made the break through for the Dockers. After half a quarter of energy sapping goalless football, Troy Cook shook off the Adelaide shackles and jailed the Dockers sixth.
That brought a bit of confidence back to the Freo players, if Cookie could do it, maybe The Wiz just had some dirt in his eyes or something. Doddy brought down a screamer at centre half back and moved the ball on quickly. It made it’s way down the ground until Shaun McManus sent it long and high to the top of the square. As Matthew Pavlich waited under the ball to take the grab Robert Shirley ran to the fence, grabbed a plank of wood he’d been hiding, and smacked Pav across the face with it. Luckily the Volvo like crumple zone he calls a nose saved him from any damage but it didn’t stop him inflicting any. The umpire finally saw a Fremantle free kick and Pavlich pushed the Dockers out to a 16 point lead.
They were back on the front foot. The FREO Speedwagon was rolling. If they could sneak another one through before the siren they’d almost be over the line. But their luck quickly turned and some very unusual umpiring decisions gave Adelaide access to the football. They managed to paddle the ball down into their forward line and, in the dying minutes Bock snuck one through from the hotdog stand around the back of the ground. They drew the margin back to 10 points. Then Bock kicked one into David Mundy’s hand and it ricocheted through the goals. No one but Roger Hayden seemed to notice that it was touched, even the bits of Mundy’s skin hanging off the ball wouldn’t convince the umpire, and Adelaide were just 4 points down going into the last change.
It was going to be a tough final term. The Crows supporters were in full voice, some of them even able to form rudimentary words, the umpires were dirty on Fremantle for some reason, and the win was picking up with every pie floater being digested.
Neil Craig had a spring in his step as he left his team to return to the coach’s box for the start of the last quarter and that could mean only one thing – he’d given the go ahead for Beatlemania. When the ball was bounced, the Crows players continued their blight on the game of Aussie Rules by running at the ball like packs of hysterical teenagers desperate for a glimpse of John, Paul, George or Ringo (well not Ring…or George). Like a row of English Bobbies, the Fremantle defenders withstood the packs for as long as they could but the Adelaide players started finding holes. Welsh put the Crows in front with a mark in the goal square, then Torney sailed one through from somewhere on the wing and the proverbial floodgates opened. As the goals kept coming, for the second week in a row Fremantle started bring players to the bench for a rest- this time in less glorious circumstances.
The Crows finished off the job with five goals for the quarters and Freo quickly downed what was left of their Pina Coladas so they could head back home to tackle the Demons in a weeks time.
