Football is a lot louder than it used to be. You've got people yelling at you outside the gates telling you where to pick up tickets, you've got ads blaring out from the giant tv sets, you've got spruikers selling lolly water and fridges and then there’s music playing to fill the gaps. Anzac Day is a different time and something slightly feared by the AFL. For one minute, all the crap is turned off as the crowd pause for a moment of silence to remember those who fell in foreign wars. Now, you can only spend so much of that time remembering the closing scene of Gallipoli and it's an inappropriate time to laugh at a joke you heard on Dad's Army so pretty soon your attention tends to drift and you start to realise that you just paid $5 for a cold hotdog without any sauce on it, that the navy guys get to keep their hats on or that 17 umpires seems like 16 too many.

As the Fremantle players lined up, face to face with the undefeated Cats, the silence got them thinking as well. They started thinking about how much hair Gary Ablett had lost, how Carmeron Ling's had had undergone the follicular equivalent of Cher's face, how Mark Thompson still looked like he'd peaked inside the arc of the covenant and, in Aaron Sandiland's case, how he'd like to beat the crap out of that giant Cat mascot.

Pretty soon they started to realise that these were just a bunch of bogans from some poxy one factory town. They weren't scared of them, they were laughing at them.

By the opening bounce, half the Geelong players had been dropped to the dirt, the other half had flinched their way down there. Fremantle got the ball out of the centre, Rhys Palmer sent it down to the forward line and Matthew Pavlich showed Harry Taylor just how ordinary he is, reaching over the top, grabbing the footy and kicking the goal.

Much like when Bruce McEvaney tuned in to watch Stewart McGill Uncorked only to find out it was a show about wine, Geelong were in shock.  They'd shown up thinking they'd broken Fremantle the last time they played them and were hoping for a light run. So they turned up the heat, they threw everything they had at Fremantle. Their blistering speed, their precision foot skills, their hard running and great team work – the lot. And for all their efforts, they got nowhere. The Fremantle defence were as impenetrable as they were cavalier.

They played on, they took on their highly fancied opponents, they kicked where ,for the love of God, they shouldn't have kicked...but everything was working. They got the ball back down to Pav and he slotted through goal number two.

Having come with a mixture of hope and frugality more than anything, the sleeping giant, the  Fremantle members, had suddenly awoken.  They were seeing the team they like to imagine over the summer months, the team that does everything right and hurts people while they do it. Aaron Sandilands looked like he actually might eat someone this time (come to think of it – didn't there used to be another Ablett kid?), hurting blokes as much with his giant limbs as he did with the footy

He plucked the ball out of the ruck, snapped it around his body and landed it on the chest of Dean Solomon in the goal square. Milburn spent the next ten minutes abusing the umpiring for not giving  him the pre-agreed free kick while Solomon strolled in to put the Dockers 3 goals up.

An unlucky bounce saw the ball land in Steven Dodd's hands while he was looking for a man to niggle, giving Geelong their first goal of the quarter against the flow of play but it was Fremantle's day. Blitzing the Cats in the forward line, their only problem was coming from their lack of practice at kicking goals. They sprayed one or two in the approach to quarter time and went into the first change 3.6 (24) to 1.1 (Useless).

Some may say a standing ovation at quarter time is going over the top (such a person would probably also like skivvies, the colour beige and West Perth) but few would deny it was deserved. Geelong aren't a side who've had accolades thrown at them lightly. They're a champion side and Fremantle were beating their brains out.

Which was why, when the players returned to their positions a few minutes later, the Freo faithful had bitten a couple of millimetres off their fingernails in nervous anticipation.

Could they keep it up? Would Geelong come back even harder? Exactly how many beer cups would need to be thrown onto the ground for them to end the game and declare Fremantle the winners? All important questions and, when Matthew Pavlich dobbed his third from 86 metres out, two of the three questions looked like having answers.

Geelong were trying to come back, they just weren't being allowed to. Too much pressure and too much skill from Fremantle were making it impossible.  They were making Geelong look like rabble.

Garrick Ibbotson unloaded from the centre square and sailed one through to push the margin out to 5 goals,  Pav jailed his fourth, Dean Solomon took a Shaun Smith style screamer in the goal square before kicking his second and  The Wiz joined in the festivities with a huge kick from somewhere on the half back line. Fremantle were running away with the game. The Cats were stunned.  If it were a Derby, the Eagles supporters would have started leaving (although with so many Geelong supporters driving Fords, they were probably just waiting for the tow trucks to arrive).

But then something went wrong.  Some people will blame Daniel Gilmore, some people will blame Antoni Grover – for kicking it to Daniel Gilmore, some will blame Mark Harvey – for playing Daniel Gilmore, some people may even blame Mr and Mrs Gilmore for introducing Daniel Gilmore to the sport of Aussie Rules. No one quite knows why he did it but Daniel Gilmore decided to kick the ball to two Geelong players, with no one between themselves and the goals – except for a third Geelong player.  A goal to Milburn was the result, the Cats getting their second of the game.

When the ball returned to the centre, Gary Ablett Jr fell over. Not a big event for most people but when you're the son of God, apparently it's a reportable offence. Ablett got a free kick as well, Geelong got their first clearance for a while and Steve Johnson got a goal.

All of a sudden, the broken Cats had been given their confidence back. They fancied themselves again and within a matter of seconds, Footsteps Chapman had kicked their 4th goal.

Fremantle were dead on their feet and Geelong looked like the gear they'd been sniffing before the game had finally kicked in. They were waltzing the ball out of the centre, as Fremantle players desperately waited for the siren to sound. And as Geelong got more of the ball, it gave the umpires more chances to pay free kicks. Things were spiralling out of control.

 Ablett kicked a goal to get the Cats within 14 points.  Mooney and Wojinski joined in on the action and when the half time siren finally blew, the Cats were within 2 points of the lead and people in the crowd were looking at serious bladder injuries after the longest quarter in living memory,

The only thing longer than the second quarter seemed to be the half time break. Probably nowhere near long enough if you were a 211cm ruckman running laps of the ground with blokes hanging off of you or a white albino tearing through the middle of the ground and a speed faster than the colour white but if you were a Fremantle supporting sitting in the crowd wondering if it was a 10 minute lapse or a 50 minute anomaly of talent then it went on for an eternity.

What wasn't going to take long was finding out the answer to that question once play got going. In 10 minutes the game was either going to be over or Fremantle were going to have regrouped and returned to their best.

As the players returned to the ground, Mark Harvey reminded them to look to the eternal flame for inspiration, and the words written underneath LEST WE Ambulance. It really must have touched a cord.

Two minutes in and Ryan Murphy faced having to run back with the flight of the ball, not knowing how many Geelong players were waiting to drop their knees into his head. Mooney clocked him as he came down and a free kick was paid – Murphy doesn't miss, so Fremantle moved a goal and a bit clear.

It was certainly the early Fremantle. Their pressure was intense, their skills were silky and their decision making was making sense again. Peter Bell was moving so well he looked like he'd forgotten his Kangaroos jumper, Steven Dodd had a crazy look in his eye like he was about to stomp on someone and Garrick Ibbotson was making Rhys Palmer look like an arthritic old man who’d forgotten to take his antispasmodic medicine  as he swept through the centre.

Ryan Crowley took a break from embarrassing Gary Ablett's kid to kick Fremantle a couple of goals clear, Rhys Palmer showed how far he's come by knocking back a call from Jeff Farmer to dob a goal himself and Aaron Sandilands brought the house down when he dragged down a huge grab in the goal square, then pulled out the Jeff Farmer, unexpected play on and goosify your opponent, to snap a goal.

When the three quarter time siren sounded, Geelong had failed to score a goal.  They were talking in terms of 'what Bobby Davis was doing', when trying to remember back to the last time the Cats have gone a quarter without scoring. Fremantle had moved 25 points clear and, bar 10 minutes had been flogged all day. It was a very confident Fremantle that swaggered back onto the ground to finish the game.

Some would say too confident. Geelong are no mugs. They'd been flogged because Fremantle had been too good for them, they weren't going to stop trying though. So, when Fremantle slackened off a bit they struck again. Bang, bang, bang. 5 goals in 10 minutes. It was slower than the last time but it gave them the lead and, after a day of hard work, Fremantle were on the ropes.

For the first time in the match, Fremantle were behind. They'd fallen 8 points behind with almost as many minutes left on the clock. Almost dead on their feet, some almost dead off the feet as they lay near the bench, they were playing on nothing but heart.

Denied free kick after free kick, Fremantle knew it was going to need something extra special to break through and find a goal.  Would they turn to Jeff Farmer, Josh Carr, Shaun McManus? No. Rhys Palmer saw the football sitting between half a dozen Geelong players, he fought his way through them, grabbed the ball then blind turned his way in and out of Cats until he was free.  Seeing the road still not clear, he knocked Corey Enright to the ground, yelled at Paul Chapman just to watch him flinch, then delivered a lace out, sponsors logo to the camera pass to Pavlich in the goal square. Pav put it through the big sticks and Fremantle were two points shy of the biggest upset since they lost to Richmond two weeks earlier.

Scared, after three quarters of Fremantle's dominance, Bomber Thompson gave the signal to flood the bejesus out of the game. Anyone who'd ever worn a Geelong jumper was to get out onto the footy ground and stand in the way of the Fremantle players.

There was no space, no time to find a team mate and no chance of getting a free kick (even when Jimmy Bartell address the football 'The Boundary Line'  stuck the correct postage on it, signed the No Dangerous Goods consent form and popped it into a post box).

With less than a minute left on the clock, Freo knew they only had one shot. So, once again, they called on the most dangerous combination in the AFL. Rhys Palmer collected the ball on the wing, had a bounce, had another bounce, then slotted the ball over two Geelong players, under two more and to the left of another, right onto the chest of Matthew Pavlich.

This was it. Dead Eye Pavlich – 5 time All Australian, Captain of the Fremantle Dockers, Pub owner.

40 metres out but in the pocket that drove Paul Medhurst to the brink of insanity. Unfazed by the 40,000 people chanting his name, the millions watching on television and the huge sums of money being gambled by bored Indians waiting for the cricket to start..he strolled back, went through his routine, lined up the kick, watched it off the boot.  It was in...it was out...it was in...it was in...the crowd liked it...Scott Thornton liked it...Freo were going to win ...it hit the post.

The siren went. Freo lost and Geelong celebrated like a team that hadn't had to work that hard for a victory in a long time.