 | When the Fremantle bosses said there goal was to play finals football, nobody expected them to be doing it in March. After doing the impossible last week, making the Eagles look even sillier on the field than off it, Fremantle now go into this weeks final against Collingwood as favourites to make the Grand Final. | | It'll be nice to see some other trophies mixed in amongst all those London Cups and dog racing photos after Fremantle declared they'll be trying to win everything they go in from now on. The downside to this is that Paul Hasleby has been spending a bit more time than the club would like, travelling around to bowling clubs and buying tickets in meat tray raffles. He's currently got three freezers full of chops, two full og sausages, a couple of eskies worth of t-bone steaks and a his dog is the size of Lance Whitnall. On the field is going just as well with the one time premiership favourites and their two Brownlow medallists copping the belting of a life time at the hands of a rejuvenated, more focused Freo side last week and Collingwood all but forfeiting the game when they agreed to travel over to Perth. While Fremantle have gone mad with winning, Collinwood have gone insane with Clokes. Recent research on the genome project revealing gene X7-318-D (or The Cloke Gene ) which, if active, sends them into a statue like state when you put them on a large grassed area. Despite this breakthrough and DNA tests confirming the Cloke gene is active in all the Clokes, Collingwood are going to persist with this family because, one can only assume, they are a hell of a lot better than the Shaws. | | The greatest challenge for Fremantle this week will be keeping a lid on things after the game. Not known for getting ahead of themselves in the pre-season, the Dockers supporters were treated to the sort of football last week that has even had the club's grumpiest critics curbing their bagging in case they're made to look very silly very quickly.
Sure, there are people who will tell you that Luke McPharlin was playing on a bloke who 99% of the population would describe as "who?".
Sure, it's not really fair that a 211cm door-to-door salesman eating monster was swatting the ball out of the centre as if he was being attacked by bi-planes and Paul Hasbely knew where each ball would be hit like some sort of Gypsy psychic with access to a time machine.
Sure, Byron Schammer was a coat of green pain away from being a small but no less incredible hulk and exposure to radioactivity is generally frowned upon in football circles.
Sure, Paul Medhurst caught everyone by surprise by running up the ground and delivering the ball lace out, sponsor's logo to the camera to the forwards with such precisions that you suspect he might have been out with the blokes from the Carlton MID ads, rigging up some sort of remote control footy.
Sure, the Eagles were a leaderless, bunch of up them selves nancy boys who think they're going to win a premiership simply because they read in the paper that it's their turn.
But the fact of the matter is, all those blokes will be doing that same sort of stuff again, Matthew Pavlich is back this week and Collingwood a leaderless, bunch of up themselves nancy boys who think they're going to win a premiership simply because they read in the paper that it's their turn.
On top of that, Collingwood have become Freo's bunny rabbits of late with a game at Subiaco Oval last year seeing Fremantle go to town on the Magpies to the tune of 112 points. As if the nine goals by Fremantle in the opening quarter weren't embarrassing enough for Collingwood, they kicked them while concedimg zero, zip, zilch, nadda, no goals. Matthew Pavlich sent shockwaves around the country with his 6 goals, each more incredible than the last. Even Dessy Headland bobbed up for a lazy 5 goals and was tackling anything that moved. Fremantle kicked more goals against Collingwood that day than anyone else has in over a hundred years.
And that was when Pav had a crook shoulder, Luke McPharlin was still learning the ropes, Medhurst was an overly muscled up freak who could hardly support his own body weight, Aaron Sandilands was still a skinny kid with a lawnmowing route and the team as a whole were low on confidence. So with nine point goals and three point rushed behinds, the scoreboard might need to go into 4 figures to cope with demand this week.
That's if the Magpies show up.
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