In these modern, stressful times, it's important to find time to take your mind of the worries of the world and just relax. Some people like gardening, some people listen to music, some people like to opt in for one of the ancient Chinese practices which let you wear pyjamas during the day – but for the people of Fremantle it doesn't come any less stressful than watching the Dockers play a game of football against the West Coast Eagles.

Usually football can be quite stressful but against the Eagles it's like being in a Corona ad. When the ball goes into the Eagles forward line, you can sit back and smile, knowing they don't have anyone who can take a mark and when it goes down Fremantle's end it's a chance to see what power forwards can do against the football equivalent of balloon animals. The only real worry is that every time Quentin Lynch goes near the ball he puts on such a production that local theatre groups lose grant money.

So, once again, in the lead up to the Derby the Eagles played their traditional game of softening up their supporters for the inevitable loss. They weren't taking it seriously, their focus was going to be on Round1, they were missing players, INSERT STANDARD EXCUSE 75 HERE, INSERT STEELY GAZE AND SARCASTIC COMMENT HERE.

It was hard for Fremantle to argue the case because, as far as they were concerned, the Eagles have never had much of a side to start with. With half their premiership side fleeing the club or being rounded up by the police, there weren't really many left to be saving for Round 1.

Fremantle weren't interested in excuses. They too had their eye on Round 1 but with an idea to be prepared for it. A match against the Eagles is little more than a glorified training run nowadays anyway, so they focused on getting their structures right, testing out the new game plan and, of course, clearing any small children from the Eagles half back line.

For anyone who was concerned how Mark Harvey's new game plan would play out, their fears were allayed very early. Aaron Sandilands sent a beautiful stab pass Matthew Pavlich's way, Pavlich centred it to David Mundy and Mundy unloaded to put as big a gap between the two sides as possible, with a 9 point Super Duper goal to open the Dockers season.

Pavlich tried to follow suit but a freak gust of wind through one of the dilapidated stands surrounding the Eagles home, blew the ball off line and it grazed the post. But while the ball was sailing over Eagles defenders giving them serious neck injuries, what was really exciting the crowd was a rejuvenated Des Headland. Looking like he'd shown up for a Brisbane Lions premiership, he was hunting down the footy and firing into the forwards like a man on a mission. It was coming in so quick that the forwards were a bit startled by it all (it is February after all) and Fremantle missed their chance to be half a dozen goals up in the opening 10 minutes.

The last time Paul Hasleby was startled was when a giant tarantula, dressed as a ghost, jumped out of a cupboard brandishing a large knife and handed him a spring loaded jar of what had appeared to be nuts. Des firing in frozen ropes wasn't going to put him off in the slightest and he got on the end of one, wandered back behind the mark and slotted through Freo's second.

As Fremantle wiped out some of the cobwebs with a few behinds, stretching the margin out to a 2 point lead, things looked to be playing out the traditional way, the Eagles were going to go yet another quarter without scoring. It was important, though, that the Eagles were allowed to try some things out and for their supporters to see how most of their goals were going to come in 2008 and so, while the Dockers swapped some players from the bench, David Wirrpanda soccered one through from the goal square to give the Eagles a score.

With fresh legs on the ground, Fremantle weren't concerned about blotting their score sheet at all. Fresh from the draft camp, Rhys Palmer ripped the ball from the bottom of a pack, bolted through the middle of the ground, took a couple of bounces and then gave Jeff Farmer the Mary of Bethany treatment. He slotted through the goal and then got in some much needed practice winding up the crowd with his fabled salute.

Some scintillating football from Roger Hayden and the clinical precision always associated with the name Drum, saw Adam Campbell pick up another goal and sent Freo into the first break 4 goals up.

Hot weather had been forecast, so the Eagles had spent 16 million dollars getting the CSIRO to develop a state of the art, mobile cooling device for their players – it consisted of a fan with a hose sticking out of it. Fremantle don't go in for such ridiculous gadgetry and they were cooled down by a good old fashioned spray from the coach. February or not, he wanted the game to be well and truly over by this point so he could switch the cricket on in the coach’s box – not to mention the fact that no one had ironed out Adam Selwood and his about to ball his eyes out expression. In this new era of toughness and brutality, it just wasn't good enough.

So, Fremantle set themselves the task of finishing off the other mob as quickly s possible. Unfortunately, a string of free kicks and goal to the Eagles signalled that the umpires had settled in quickly and were back to their ridiculous best.

A goal went the Eagles way as a result but deadly Mundy/Pavlich combination struck again, with a goal each wedging the gap. More umpire silliness gave Hansen a goal, firing up the Dockers even more.

A new skinny, nimble young lad (with a slightly disproportionate head) by the name of Hasleby popped up for his second goal before the play of the day brought the house down. Matthew Pavlich chased and harassed Eagle stooges as they desperately tried to run the ball from Fremantle's forward half. Eventually one of them had the courage to hang onto the ball for more than a few seconds and Pav was able to wrap the guns around him. As the ball spilled free, Mark Johnson picked it up. He faked to the left, blind turned to the right, side stepped a couple of Eagles and fired out a handpass to Jeff Famer. So quick was The Wiz that it took a slow motion replay to see if he actually touched the ball or had just willed it in the direction of Drum. Drum went to Gilmore, Gilmore to Headland and then Dessy unloaded from 65 metres out to kick himself a Super Duper goal.

As it turns out, there must have been a lot of West Coast supporters with small children because they all left the ground at the point, obviously to get the kids off to bed. As they made their way to the car park there would have been few regrets, with the crowd providing the soundtrack to Dean Solomon's first goal after Stompy Dodd picked him out from the wing.

With Fremantle more than tripling the Eagles score, Harvs called the boys in to catch the final moments of the cricket. Some coaches may have waited the 40 seconds till the siren sounded and stopped Le Cras kicking a late goal but the bloke loves his cricket and, when he Eagles finally joined Fremantle in leaving the ground, it was all over – at Subiaco and the Adelaide Oval.

A half time address focussing on the importance of two full time spinners on a turning pitch was probably a bit distracting for the Fremantle players and they didn't return to the ground quite as focussed, spraying a few shots in front of goals and messing up a few other chances. They were still running rings around the “opposition” though with Josh Carr and Byron Schammer working hard through the centre and Michael Johnson starting to find some magic as the much touted giant wingman philosophy was finally put into practice. Another quarter of complete dominance and Fremantle would be far enough in front for Marker Harvey to try Kevin Sheedy's trick of swapping the forwards and the backs around.

Then something bad happened. As he chased after a loose ball, Paul Hasleby ran afoul of a Selwood. Always one to go in low for some reason, Selwood chopped Hasleby off at the knees and sent him flailing to the ground, grabbing his knee in pain. Suddenly the game wasn't quite so much fun.

With their typical intransigence, the umpires refused to stop play so the runners were forced to roll Hasleby from the ground while the ambulance made it's way to remove him from the ground.

When they'd finally driven him off for his scans, the Fremantle players started to have second thoughts about just how enthusiastically they wanted to play the game out. Des Headland had already left the ground with blood gushing out of his head and another Eagle had taken out an innocent camera man. Who knew how long it would be before one of them tried to rip Matthew Pavlich's shoulder from his socket or break Sandilands jaw again.

So, flattened by the potential news of Hasleby and worried for their own safety, the rest of the quarter saw Fremantle go through the motions. Even then they dominated the game with the Eagles managing just one score, to take them into the last quarter 6 goals down.

Mark Harvey wasn't all that happy with the thought that his Derby winning average might fall below 10 goals if the players continued to take things easy so he brought out one of the rev ups he'd been working on for the regular season. By all accounts it was a work of poetry, the beauty of which was only surpassed by the Olivien like delivery. Some players returned to the ground with tears in the eyes others with fire in their bellies - Luke McPharlin went a little bit over the top with is emotion when he tackled Byron Schammer at full back and gave Seaby a goal but other than that it was just another case of Fremantle putting on a football clinic.

Des Headland threaded a pass through all sorts of traffic to set Michael Johnson up for an easy goal. Jeff Farmer making Chad Fletcher look a level of silliness that only his haircut has taken him to previously. Matthew Pavlich slotting one through from row G of the stand directly behind the goals. Then of course there was Rhys Palmer, kicking his first AFL goal with the poise of a bloke who will play a lot of footy before he turns 20.

44 points up at the final siren, all in all, it was a good solid training run for Fremantle. Next week they head to Adelaide where the obstacles are likely to be mobile and where the risk of injury increases the closer you get to the food vendors.