The Northern Territory is an ancient and mysterious place. For thousands of years it’s been it’s been an enigma to those who’ve inhabited it and even in modern times it’s thrown up more questions that it has answers? Did Lindy kill her baby? Did Lindy kill Peter Falconio? Why did the Japanese bother bombing Darwin and what were they going to do with it if they’d taken it? And who thought Darryl Sommers was a good choice as a tourism spokesman? But probably the most confusing of all why are a team from the east coast called the Western Bulldogs playing home games in the Northern Territory?
Just trying to get his head around the geography it all had Luke McPharlin fainting with dizzy spells so the rest of the players decided just not to think about it, they grabbed their purple thongs and headed up north.
When the footy got started a few days later, they had a new mystery to ponder on – what happened to their defence. In less than a minute Fremantle had conceded two goals. Pavlich hadn’t even walked to his spot in the goal square after tossing the coin. Aaron Sandilands had bent down to tie his shoelace and hadn’t come back up yet. Chris Connolly was still queued up at the Mr Whippy van. Fremantle were in trouble.
Alarm bells were ringing (or it could have just been Peter Bell getting the ball). At this rate the game was going to be over before Mark Harvey was back with the hotdogs.
Then as quickly as the Bulldogs had made their attack, Fremantle made their own and gave them a few lessons in footy while they did it. Pav had an unsuccessful ping from the centre square and Des Headland tried from a bit further out with even less success before Sandilands dobbed one from the resulting throw in. He made his way back to the centre, smashed the ball forward and a few seconds later David Mundy was celebrating giving Fremantle the lead.
They’d misread the fixture, they were actually playing the Spaghetti Western Bulldogs and it was an old fashioned shootout. Des Headland put through the fifth goal of the game with less than three minutes gone on the clock and Chris Tarrant had goal number 6 up before the three and a half minute mark. They were on track to pass the hundred points mark before time on.
It wasn’t until Pavlich missed a shot on goal that the Bulldogs actually saw the ball again and, thanks to a highly dubious free kick, Luke Darcy kicked a goal.
The game started to settle into a bit of a rhythm. Peter Bell crumbed a goal that he deemed worthy of his Fishy Fishy Oh celebration before unloading with the much anticipated Northern Territorpedo; Cooney benefited from a brief lapse in the laws of geometry; Warnock continued in his quest to break down the cultural barriers and bring Brett Lee’s wicket celebrations to the sport of AFL; Higgins avoided the nickname Missy for another week; and Chris Tarrant fired the final shot with an absolute screamer in the goal square and an easy goal.
The people of Darwin were certainly getting their monies worth - 12 goals in a quarter, fast paced, free flowing footy, hard tackling, speckie marks, brilliant goals, stupid umpiring and three blokes who have to kneel down to change a light bulb - all they needed was a big hit on someone and they could tick their Footy Bingo cards off and go home.
It was lucky then that the Footo cards hadn’t been handed out before the game because there could have been a mass exodus when Matthew Carr was given a close inspection of the TIO turf at the start of the second quarter. They rolled Carr onto the stretcher and sent him down to the medical rooms with Luke McPharlin to stare up at the ceiling.
There was panic in the coach’s box. Not many teams could afford to lose two East Fremantle players in one day and they were frantically trying to find someone who could fill the void left by Carr of hanging around on the wings with his hands in his pockets (even if they could find another player with pockets sewn into his shorts).
A combination of the upset structure and a made up free kick saw the Bulldogs peg one back but Fremantle regrouped. Dean Solomon dobbed a quick reply while Heath Black unveiled the left foot monster on the run he usually reserves as the match sealer in the last quarter.
Fremantle were looking the goods - dominating the centre clearances, moving the ball quickly through the middle of the ground, putting on a skills exhibition for the footy starved locals and turning into ferocious ball hunting beasts when the Bulldogs got hold of the ball.
Unfortunately their biomechanist had buggered off back to Victoria, though, and they weren’t setting new fields of excellence in front of goals. After Fremantle notched up a string of behinds, the Bulldogs made them pay with two quick goals. James Walker stopped their run after asking the other blokes if they’d mind if he had a go at it but no one was paying attention to Jimmy and they continued piling on the behinds while the Doggies snuck through two more.
Freo went into the main break with a 5 point lead, literally. They’d kicked 10.10 and supporters were starting to have flash backs to Paul Medhurst’s 1.6 against the Bulldogs a year earlier, Justin Longmuir’s 0.7 before that. On the bright side, half the Bulldogs goals had come from dodgy free kicks and the other half from Old Man Johnson. The umpires would have to start to square up soon and the heat was going to get to Johnson eventually.
That could well have been the message the boys were given at half time too because, when they came back, they started slowly again. Two quick Bulldogs goals saw Fremantle lose the lead for the first time since the opening minute.
At the pace the game was being played at, the Dockers were in danger of getting blown away pretty quickly. If it was a Subi they’d know this because the Freo Shuffle would be in full effect and a nervous murmur would be coming from the crowd. In Darwin it wasn’t so much a nervous murmur as the sound of thousands of people making their way back from the dunnies yelling out things like ‘get off me thongs’, ‘someone’s left the lights on on their Datsun’, ‘did you hear Darryl Sommers is up for the game’ and ‘does anyone know where they sell colourful, knitted jumpers around here’.
Somehow the players still got the message. They weren’t winning the ball as cleanly as they had in the first quarter but they went after it with as much gusto. They worked their way back to controlling the game and peppering the goals before finally breaking through for a major when Troy Cook picked Harris off from 30 metres away and Pav finally got one to go where he wanted it. They were back in front and it was the Bulldogs who were starting to look worried. Another captain’s goal from Pavlich stretched the lead and Fremantle were looking confident.
But as quickly as Fremantle had steadied, the momentum shifted. They’d spent a lot of petrol setting up all those behinds and it was starting to show. As the quarter stretched on they were all looking just a bit to keen to have a sit down and a bit of orange. To make matters worse, the Doggies were looking surprisingly fresh and put on three quick goals to take back the lead and have the Dockers in a bit of strife. Chris Connolly’s plan to put the players in a heat chamber to acclimatise to the conditions was probably a good one, letting them take a Gameboy and a beanbag in there was probably not as well thought out.
Thankfully, Peter Bell and Matthew Pavlich combined to keep the damage down to a one point margin at three quarter time. A bit of a rest, some time in the glorified fridge and they’d be sorted. The message coming out of the coach’s mouth was as simple as it was filthy. Take the chance sin front of goals because it’s hard work chasing them back the other way.
The quarter didn’t start well. Brad Johnson and Scott West were somehow still going and combined to get the Doggies on the front foot early. Darcy kicked another one to get them on the other foot and give Freo a bit of a job to do to get back into the game.
Another goal from Dean Solomon was handy and Dessy Headland put his hand up to say Fremantle weren’t going to go down wondering but then things started to go wrong.
The umpires were too tired to bounce the ball more than a couple of metres, wiping out Freo’s dominance in the ruck, they also could only blow the whistle if they were facing down wind which made getting a kick difficult in the forward line. Exhausted and sick of seeing the forwards spray kicks, the Fremantle midfield only kicked to positions they knew the forwards would kick goals from. It didn’t take the Doggies long to figure out that they should all stand in that spot and Fremantle were just burning up energy bombing the ball to the opposition.
A goal to Dodd was all they could muster against 4 the other way, seeing them lose by 26 points with a week off to think about what they’ve done.
