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It's a different story over in South Australia though. A state made up of the bit of Australia no one else wanted. Neither west nor east, or even the most south, they're the middle of the road. The wishy washy state. The brown corduroy pants of Australia.
Their football teams are no different. The Crows did their best work from 5th place where no one noticed them and Port's two greatest achievements were playing against the best two sides of the millennium. Sides people actually go along to watch.
Both South Australian sides gave a bit of a wink at the top half of the ladder for a few weeks but never quite settled on whether they wanted to be in or out, with the competition finally deciding their fate.
Even amongst the blandness of South Australian football, Port play second fiddle. They're the patches on the knees of the corduroy pants.
Even when they had a chance to do something right this week they couldn't They sent Chad Cornes to the doctors for some surgery, that means he'll miss the rest of the season, in particular, the game against Fremantle this week. Steven Dodd has been counting down the days until he could smack Chad around again, he would have fixed up his shoulder at no cost to Chad's insurance company and done a bit of work on that whole face problem of his as well. Chad could have had a crack back too, it’s not like he planned to finish out the season anyway.
Of course, Port Adelaide did have a rare win on the weekend. Their first since Fremantle's record breaking performance against them in Round 10 which saw the Dockers rip the chocking tag straight out of Port Adelaide's hands with a precision display of falling over in the last quarter. Port, who have flirted with choking off on and off for many years but never had the commitment to put their names in the record books.
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The win was over Adelaide. The rest of the pants. In a season that was over long ago, an enemy of pretty much pure evil and a long list of players wanted to get various surgeries done. And what was the result - not one bloke was asked to front the tribunal on the Monday. They ponced about for three hours playing football without one decent outbreak of blood lust.
Organising a punch up in a derby is akin to putting on refreshments at a brewery but organising one in a derby where neither side has a reason to even front up the following week should be as easy as finding a hooker at Daniel Chick's place.
Last time the WA sides were in this position they chartered a plane to get all the players over to the tribunal rooms. If you hadn't thrown a punch in a quarter your coach was dragging you. Had Fremantle any players available to take the field in Round 22 that season, they may have missed out on snaring a two time premiership medal winner who captain the side and took home a swag of Doigs. the South Australian teams will be lucky to get the last remaining Selwood (the one with the serious psychological problems from sharing ‘that’ bedroom) or the best South Australian youngster going around, Daniel Schell.
Now, you might be thinking that Port's lack of commitment to the cause is a danger sign for Fremantle.But Fremantle desire to go out spectacularly is over ridden by a greater need to make sure the Eagles go down even more spectacularly. With a win over Melbourne last week, Fremantle left what the greenies like to call a Percentage Footprint. They pushed the Demons’ percentage so low that even the Eagles were able to stay off the bottom ladder. With no sign that Melbourne will be playing anything resembling football in the next few weeks, it's up to Fremantle to undo that damage and beat the Eagles by more than they beat Melbourne, plus a few more goals for good measure.
You can't just go into these things cold so look to Fremantle honing their skills this week against the Port Knee Patches. Port have just beaten the Crows, so there's no reason for to expect them to put up a fight for a couple of weeks. Mark Williams himself has taken the week off just so he can ring up Crows supporters who have wronged him at some point in the course of the year and with Chad Cornes spending a lot of time at the club with nothing to do but wander around and chat to team mates, very few of the players have been able to stomach going into work either.
Fresh from their warm up match against the Demons, Fremantle will take things up a notch this week. Put Pav down for a dozen, Aaron Sandilands down for 3 Brownlow votes, Josh Carr down for a few weeks and get on the over forty.
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WA is a big state and when we do things in WA we like to do them big. Big mines, big farms, big buildings, big gutted union bosses and bloody big rocks that look like things. Our footy teams are no different. When they get on a big winning streak the plebs over east start getting nervous and, by golly, when they go bad they go bad magnificently - filling out the bottom spots on the ladder and barely putting in a win for the season between them. If a job's worth doing it's worth doing big.
