As the home and away season drew to a close, the equation for Fremantle was simple. Beat Carlton and they won a home final.

From there, they’d dispatch of either Hawthorn or Carlton again before heading over to Melbourne to storm over the top of the injury ravaged Bulldogs. The next week they’d return to Melbourne with Chris Tarrant to give Geelong another taste of the Fremantle style of football with a thrilling win at the MCG. The Grand Final parade would provide a nice distraction before the Dockers headed back to the MCG to play Collingwood. A hundred thousand people would pack into the ground to watch Stephen Hill win the Norm Smith Medal and Fremantle make history with their first AFL Flag.

Celebrations back home would be exuberant yet tasteful as the nation bowed down before their purple masters, for a decade lone reign of the Fremantle Dockers and, of course, the Fremantle theme song would rocket to number one on the ARIA charts.

It was a simple equation but first they had to get past Carlton. It hardly seemed like something to worry about though...except of course when The Blues kicked the opening two goals in the first two minutes and Fremantle were suddenly starting their finals with a trip to New South Wales to play the bloody Swans at a running track.

But as quickly as the tension set in, it was elevated. The rested Dockers just needed a few minutes to get a feel back for the pace of the game and Michael Walters and Matthew Pavlich had them in front before you could say ‘who stole Mitch Robinson’s neck’.

Even though the Dockers had set in motion the inevitable, the three point lead wasn’t enough to see Carlton concede. They’d done their homework - by whinging to the umpires for past three months. They’re easily manipulated creatures, umpires, so despite Carlton scragging off the ball, throwing elbows and  sticking knees in places where knees aren’t supposed to go, all the umpires saw was their diving and arm flailing.

The result was that Carlton kicked a couple more goals and took back a handy lead. Luckily for Fremantle, the true hands and pin point kicking of the Purple Baron gave the Dockers a late goal to take them into the first break 4 points down.

The scoreline wasn’t what Fremantle had been expecting when they’d set out to annihilate the Blues at the start of the game but they were well aware that they had dominated the play, killed them around the ruck and deserved to be three of four goals up. Mark Havey wasn’t worried, all it meant was that they would need to kick a few more goals than had been scheduled for the other three quarters. So he sent them back onto the ground with revised instructions, a bit of a rev up and the promise of a 2-for-1 voucher to the sunglasses shop he apparently has shares in.

When Fremantle returned to the ground, Carlton started to have second thoughts about their decision to make the trip over. Fremantle monstered them in the centre. David Mundy often comes across as a laconic sort of footballer. Apparently he’s just been buggered for the past 5 years. A week off and he was flying through the middle at break neck speed. Pavlich was steamrolling through the opposition, leaving a trail of over rated Carlton midfielders in his wake and Stephen Hill was turning Bruce McAvaney gay again.

A thumping kick out of the centre got the ball in the direction of the Purple Baron who threw himself in front of three Carlton players, won the footy, got up, shrugged off a tackle, steadied, put the ball on his boot and sent it onto the chest of Hayden Ballantyne - and even after all that he still had the best hair in the competition. 

The Mayor of Mandurah drilled the goal and Freo were back where they belonged - in front.

Some highly suspicious umpiring saw Lachie Henderson score against the flow of play but Fremantle’s lack of accuracy ironically kept them in front.

Sensing their season slipping away, Carlton stepped their flooding up a notch and completely cleared out their forward half of the ground to try and hold back the ever threatening flood of goals that Fremantle looked set to bring down on them.

It took some special players to eventually break through the flood. The first was Sonny Walters, who used his quick feet, perfect balance and complete lack of a right boot to maneuver through half a dozen Carlton types before steadying and picking out a mate in the crowd who was sitting behind the goal umpire.

Stephen Hill went one better, getting on the end of the ultimate power play with Pavlich starting off the chain of events; going through Ballatyne, who ran down the ground like the metaphoric driverless train, before hitting up Hill who had snuck forward and was standing in the goal square moving more like the reality of a driverless train - not at all. Hill kicked the goal to put Freo 14 points up and Carlton were starting to worry.

They were right to worry. Fremantle were back to their scintillating form from early in the season, running hard, taking chances and  tackling with scant regard for humanity. Another thing they’d brought back from earlier in the year was Chris Mayne.

Some handy work from Pavlich saw the ball wind up in Mayne’s hands and he popped through Fremantle’s 8th goal to remind the faithful just how much they’d missed his golden locks up forward.

It was all over now. Fremantle were running rings around Carlton, the home final was locked away and Freo supporters were heading out the back to line up at the ticket booth. Then they heard the roar from the Carlton supporters as Garlett kicked a goal and quickly headed back inside to watch the rest of the match.

There wasn’t much left to see before the half time siren sounded though so they gathered around, arguing over the age old debate about who’s better - Pavlich or Sandilands and reveling in the very idea of being able to discuss the permutations of who Fremantle would play in the first final.

For the players though, thinking about next week wasn’t a luxury they could indulge in just yet. They had a 14 point lead, they were controlling the game and all their previously rested players were on fire but things have gone wrong for the Dockers from far better positions over the years.

Despite the late goal, Mark Harvey couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. A week ago at half time he was staring at a magnetic board wondering if he should play Steven Dodd or Ryan Murphy at full forward, this week he had a slightly better set of tools than the hammer and the bag of Allen keys left over from various ill thought-out Ikea purchases he’d had at his disposal in Tasmania. He was like a kid from Rockingham in a lolly shop with no security cameras.

When he was done playing around, he gave the boys a bit of a rev up roughed up Roberton’s hair and told them to wrap the game up quickly so Chris Scott could get home to catch the end of Doc Martin.

It was a slower than expected start to the second half. Freo locked the ball in to their forward line but they just couldn’t get it to go through the two big sticks. After one too many attempts and some highly suspicious boundary umpiring, Carlton kicked another goal to peg the margin back to 10 points.

It was hard to believe after all Freo’s dominance they were only a couple of kicks in front so they quickly set about fixing the situation.

Stephen Hill broke Fremantle’s fifteen minute goal drought, picking the ball up at the back of a pack of Carlton players who were hanging on to Matthew Pavlich, then snapping it over his head from the pocket, kicking the goal and bringing the forty thousand Dockers supporters to their feet (unfortunately one of those supporters was Michael Barlow who really shouldn't be on his feet and will now have to miss another six weeks. Thank you very much bloody Stephen Hill).

The Freeee-ooooo chant was echoing around Subiaco and around the suburbs of Perth as the supporters grew in confidence but the players, who were less inclined to start celebrating two and a half quarters in,  kept their no nonsense attack on the footy up.

Chris Mayne kicked his second goal of the night when Roger Hayden spotted him up at centre half forward and Michael Johnson got involved in the scoring when Paul Bower indecently assaulted him in the goal square.

When quarter time came around, Fremantle had stretched their lead out to 29 points and the crowd were a couple of blokes getting up to go to the toilets at the same time away from starting a Mexican wave.

By the time the players had had their sport cordial and isotopic oranges, a queue was forming around the ground in front of the ticket booth again. The potential worry was that Mark Harvey was standing three spots in front of Matthew Pavlich who’d been let in by David Mundy.

With a five goal buffer though, they could afford to take it a little bit easy. Best to play it safe this close to playing a home final. What was the worst thing that could happen.

Well, three back to back to back goals to Carlton was probably towards the top of the list. Carlton had given up on the idea that they could operate Pagan’s Paddock without a key forward and decided to put the odd player in front of the ball - no one had seen it coming.

All of a sudden Fremantle’s home final securing lead had been cut back to 11 points and the crowd were getting a bit antsy.

Freo looked like they’d gone out in sympathy with the train drivers as Carlton suddenly appeared competent. The pressure was growing, the idea of failure was starting to seep in and the Dockers were one more goal away from panic breaking out.

But before anyone reverted to cannibalisation, Michael Johnson steadied himself, kicked a goal, and steadied the side. The handy buffer saw Freo grow in confidence once more, they waltzed the ball out of the centre and Morabito drilled another one to put Fremantle back out to a 23 point lead.

Freo knew they were safe now. The home final was safe. The road to the flag was safe. The purple reign was safe. They could relax a bit.

They get a lot of things wrong at Fremantle.

No sooner had they taken their foot off Carlton’s neck, than Carlton put through another three goals. They were scoring them at will.

It was only a goal the difference. Panic set in - no one had done the finals calculations based on a draw.

There was too much going on to bring out the abacus now though. Fremantle desperately thumped the ball forward at the next bounce, they just wanted to get it up  their end so the ferals in the forward line could go to town and lock the thing up for the next three minutes.

McPhee booted it towards the half forward line, then Roberton swung his foot at it and got it into space. Now, all that remained between Hayden Ballanytne and glory was Shaun Grigg.

He had no idea what to do. He could hear the footsteps getting closer, he could see the fans behind the goals cheering the Ballas on, he knew the Mayor’s reputation and wasn’t going to let the littlest Docker make him look the fool - so he did it himself, rushing a behind. He gave Fremantle a two shot lead, Carlton didn’t have enough time and the Dockers went on to score a home final.