It’s become a cliché within a cliché - Fremantle’s season has been like something out of a Hollywood movie. It was never more evident as Fremantle ran out onto Telstra Stadium. Cast you mind back to April. Fremantle started their season in a small country town called Launceston, playing in a mud heap in front of ten thousand indifferent supporters, huddled together on a dilapidated grand stand. They slogged out 4 quarters in terrible conditions and lost by 4 goals to lowly Hawthorn.

Fast forward 7 months and the Dockers were running out onto the scene of Australia’s greatest sporting moment, in front of 60,000 screaming Swans supporters to battle it out with the reigning premiers for a spot in the Grand Final.

All they’d need to do is add a wise cracking fat kid and get Danny Elfman to knock out a soundtrack and it’ would have box office smash written all over it.

Of course, the fact that the Swans full forward was being played by Barry Hall, with a head like an oversized turnip, and not Borris Hallski the dashing but evil Russian was a fair indication that this was in fact a game of Aussie Rules football and not the feel good ending of a straight to video movie.

Of course, that didn’t stop the original black hat wearing villains from rearing their ugly heads early. After a tough opening few minutes as the players released their nervous energy, Shane Parker was pinged for holding the ball despite neither hand being anywhere near the ball. The Sydney crowd didn’t know any better but O’Keefe couldn’t believe his luck when the whistle went and had no trouble converting it into a six pointer.

Charity or not, getting the first goal seemed to settle the Swans down but it didn’t do a lot for Freo. As they struggled to find their feet, Big Bad Bopping Barry Hall found his sticking into the back of Shaun McManus’s head as he pulled down a screamer. He kicked a goal and the Swans were off to a flyer.

The Dockers were in trouble. Despite Aaron Sandilands winning the ball out of the ruck like King Kong swatting biplanes out of the sky, they’d hardly had any of the ball in the opening 10 minutes of the game. They needed a lift and it was Jeff Farmer to the rescue. As Heath Black put his raking left foot into action, the ball made a rare visit into Fremantle’s forward line. The Wiz ducked and dodged and weaved his way through the Swans flooding and then snapped the ball 130 degrees behind him. It sailed through for a miracle goal – but, as Jeff celebrated, the umpire claimed that he heard a finger tip connect with the ball over the sound of 60,000 Swans supporters.

Jeff wasn’t happy and when Leo Barry dared to pick the ball up after the kick in, The Wiz pounced on him, got the free kick and put through the Dockers first goal of the day.

It was game on. Tough, tight footy as Fremantle tried desperately to play on at all costs and the Swans tried desperately to not let a game of football break out. The massive crowd were getting behind their team, it was real finals football.

But they were silenced by one of the most disgraceful acts ever seen on a football. After Lewis Roberts-Thomson all but king hit Luke McPharlin in a marking contest, and the Fremantle centre half back lay dying in the middle of the oval, Michael O’Loughlin stepped over his carcass, had a couple of bounces, kicked the ball down the ground and Jude Bolton kicked a goal. The crowd cheered but not for Bolton’s goal, rather for McPharlin’s courage as his body was carried from the ground.

It was an act of barbarity that united the Dockers and focussed them on winning the game. They started moving the ball quickly and with purpose. Kicking long to try and beat the Swans poxy running game down the ground. It was hard going with so many Swans camping out in the Dockers forward line but a thousand Swans wouldn’t have been able to stop Ryan Crowley from getting the sit and pulling down a late contender of goal of the year, in the goal square. He ran around, snapped the goal and the Dockers had 2.

When the ball went back to the centre, there wasn’t much time left on the clock. Jeff Farmer pulled out his set play book and flicked through the chapter on last minute miracle goals. He got Aaron Sandilands to thump the ball down to Des Headland, Headland kicked the ball to The Wiz, he put it to the top of the goal square and, were it not for a clip across the ear, Pavlich was supposed to soccer through the goal. Amazingly the umpire paid the free kick to Pavlich and Fremantle got the goal but it didn’t have quite the same magic as Jeff’s original plan. Still, no one was complaining when Fremantle went into the quarter time break matching Sydney’s 3 goals and trailing by a handful of points.

The game was starting to show hallmarks of the Dockers shellacking of the Eagles a few weeks earlier. The Swans had had the most of the footy in the first quarter, at times looked like they had the ability to blow Fremantle out of the water, but when the players looked up at the scoreboard there was only a kick in it, Freo would have been feeling pretty confident munching on their oranges. A sharper second quarter and they could have the game wrapped up in time to catch the last plane back to Fremantle.

But nothing saps confidence faster than having 2 goals kicked against you in as many minutes then losing your number one tagger with an ankle injury. All of a sudden they were 16 points down and Adam Goodes was running loose. It was going to take some bloody good oranges to lift their spirits after that – of course the other option was for Matthew Pavlich to stick his arms up above a pack of 7 Sydney players and bring down a mark in the goal square. He kicked the goal and everything seemed alright again.

Sydney were on the back foot now. Their match winning plan to sit ten blokes on Pavlich at all times was in jeopardy. To make matters worse for them, Pav had started wandering around the ground chasing the footy like an IOC official after a kick back. He got the ball on the wing and booted it inside fifty for Fremantle. He’d taken all the Swans players with him so there was no one at home. The little legs of Peter Bell sensed an opportunity and they took off after the ball, taking Peter with them. The ball sat up for him in the pocket, the boundary line was fast approaching, there was only one thing to do – go the Daicos. He snapped the ball off his left foot, curled it around the boundary line and watched it bounce through for a goal.

Sydney’s lead had been cut back to 4 points and the Dockers were coming at them fast. It seemed only a matter of time before Fremantle hit the front and kicked on to a Grand Final.

Paul Roos could see it coming too so he sent out the runner. He put twenty blokes on Pavlich - the AFL weren’t going to enforce any rules if it meant Sydney were in another Grand Final. Then he rounded up everyone in the crowd wearing the full Swans kit and told them to stand around the centre bounce. Then he got security to tape off the left wing just to bottle things up even more. If it was the SCG they would have needed the jaws of life to remove players from the ground. At Stadium Australia there was just enough room for players to edge their way around the ground

Ryan O’Keefe had been planning his attack for week, drinking nothing but diet milkshakes and used his waif like frame to squeeze past the Boltons and kick a much needed goal for the Swans.

They didn’t stop their though. The new bulked up Fremantle had no chance when Will O’Loughlin the Wisp and Skinny Goodes slotted past Heath Black to kick the Swans 17 points clear and then Not that Big Bulge Busting Barry Hall did likewise to take Sydney out to a 23 point lead in the shadows of half time.

The Dockers were in trouble again. They couldn’t get their fast ball movement happening and the Swans were controlling the game. The needed a lift, they needed some inspiration, they needed a leader. So Peter Bell gave it to them. With 20 seconds left on the clock, he plucked the ball out of the sky, threw it onto his boot and snapped a goal over the heads of the 14 derelicts that Paul Roos had dressed up in Swans gear and promised a couple of left over hamburger patties to if they stood in the goal square for the night.

So when the siren sounded for halftime, the Freo players walked in with a bit more bounce in their step. They were still three goals down but if you’re not smiling after Peter Bell has just tried to give Aaron Sandilands a high five then you’re playing footy for the wrong reasons.

The other thing that would have had the Freo players smiling was the game they’d seen a few weeks earlier. Sydney were up at halftime by a similar margin in their only other final for the year. The lead was coughed up pretty quickly in the second half and, in the end, the Swans just fell over the line against a second rate outfit Also, they grow bloody good oranges in New South Wales.

When the Dockers came back after half time they’d formulated a plan to use the congestion and turn the ground into a giant pinball machine. They bounced it around at ridiculous speed in the centre before sending it long down the middle. Unfortunately there were a couple of Sydney players playing the roll of flippers in the goal square and, whenever the ball went down the ground, it came back up again.

The ball was building up more and more speed with every movement though and it was only a matter of time before Freo found a way through. That was of course, unless the umpires had absolutely no idea about the rules of the game and plucked out a ridiculous free kick to Barry Hall. The Swans got a goal and Fremantle were chasing 4 goals.

They weren’t going to let a few dodgy umpiring decisions spoil things for them though. Fremantle always factor in half a dozen goals from the umpires when they’re doing their planning. Brett Peake set about correcting the problem, taking the ball off Shane Parker on the wing and unloading from 68 metres out to kick what most football experts are describing as goal of the year.

They would have had quick back to back goals but someone must have pointed a high powered laser pointer at Matthew Pavlich’s eyes or threatened to torture his parents, causing him to miss from spitting distance of the goals.

It was a costly miss too because most of the Fremantle players had assumed it was going through and buggered off back to the centre for the bounce. When he missed, the Swans players took advantage of Fremantle’s confidence in the All Australian Reserve, kicked the ball over their heads and Barry Hall kicked a soft goal.

For all their hard work and superior ability, Fremantle just didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. With the risks they were taking to move the ball forward, they couldn’t afford to keep missing their chances because the Swans were killing them on the rebound.  They needed to string some goals together to start putting the pressure back on the Swans.

And they couldn’t have done it better. Justin Longmuir grabbed the ball out of the centre ruck and booted it to Pavlich. Pav picked up the ball, turned around and made amends for choking with a devastating goal.

Jlo tried to do it again but Roos had moved the derelicts up into the centre. Instead they had to take a slightly longer, multiple kick to goal. Michael Johnson kicked the ball to Troy Cook on the fifty metre line. Cookie took the mark but Buchanan foolishly gave away a fifty metre penalty to take Cook just outside his kicking range. He rose to the occasion though and dobbed the goal. It was starting to get very interesting and the handful of Fremantle supporters scattered around the ground managed to muster up a chant of freeee-oooo to let the player know they were on their way.

Then the umpires stepped in. Not happy with the way the game was going, they started inventing new rules while at the same time ignoring the more traditional things like holding the ball, in the back and throwing. So while Justin Longmuir was having his head reattached to his body and Luke McPharlin calling in the emergency chiropractor, Michael O’Loughlin spent his time celebrating the goal he just kicked.

But the Dockers weren’t just going to lie down. They’d been playing against about 29 Sydney players, 42 supporters and a dozen deros dressed like Sydney players, another 3 blokes with whistles playing for Sydney wasn’t going to worry them.

So they took the ball out of the centre, got it to Peter Bell in the pocket and he slotted one through from an even more impossible angle than his first one. 

But no matter how much the Dockers lifted, the umpires had that little bit more class and were able to steal their momentum away. They did three free kicks in a row to line Barry Hall up for his fourth goal – a record in a non-Derby match.

A miracle goal from Crowley caught the umpires off guard but they fought back before the final siren when the umpire in the Fremantle forward line took his whistle out of his mouth and gave it to the bloke up the other end. All the stories of AFL conspiracies were finally hitting home as Schneider and Davis were handed a couple of late goals.

There was no buoyant mood going into the three quarter time huddle. They’d worked their guts out for the quarter, they’d dominated all over the ground and yet they’d still been beaten. It was time to start worrying.

One quarter left to play. Twenty points to make up. The film rights to  Fremantle’s story were either going to go through the roof  or wind up in the pile they found the Deuce Bigalow scripts on.

When Pavlich kicked the opening goal a nervous murmur started doing the rounds at Stadium Australia. Fremantle were coming home with a wet sail. The very faint freeeee-ooooo chant went up. But the Swans are the masters of bottling things up. Most wouldn’t have thought it possible but they actually managed to slow the game down long enough that the Fremantle supporters started to get bored of their chant. Then, as spirits started to drop, Sydney made their move.

Hall and O’Loughlin put through a couple of quick goals and Fremantle’s view of the Grand Final became a very tiny dot on the horizon. Pretty soon it became a contest between a team playing their last quarter of the season and a team playing the first fifth of their Premiership match as the Swans started to run with confidence and put through the sealers.

By the time the siren had sounded, the score was irrelevant. Fremantle were heading back to WA with nothing left to do for 6 months but lift heavy things, run like buggery and stew on what could have been.