Courage, determination, heart, a passion for his team and a mane of golden locks that would have done Shirley Temple proud. They are the things that people think about when they hear the name Shaun McManus. Over 10 years of giving every thing he had to the club, always pushing forward and never giving in despite some nasty obstacles getting in his way. In game 200 he was given the honours of tossing the coin, as it came down heads he looked at the umpire, pointed to the wing and said ‘we’ll kick that way’.

It was a good sign for Fremantle, when he played his 150th he told the umpire they were going to have a bat.

It was a good toss to win. The wind had more blow in it than … well, you can finish that one for yourself – they’ve apologised for all that sort of behaviour. It was quite windy and there was talk in some of the less optimistic weather bureaus of rain on its way.  The carefully formulated plan would have been to kick a few quick goals with the wind to set up an early lead, wait for the rain to settle in and then grind out the rest of the match.

There was a small hiccup in the plan when Ian Perrie kicked the first goal of the game in the first couple of minutes. It was nothing to worry about though. All it really meant was they were going to have to kick one more goal before the rain came, then they could slog it out for the rest of the game and protect their lead.

Then it started to rain. Another hiccup in the plan.

It wasn’t just regular rain either. It was rain that would usually see animals pairing themselves up for Noah’s sex boat (or Ark as it’s traditionally known). There was no lead to be had now, just a day of slogging it out.

Apparently no one had told the game plan to the new bloke though. In torrential rain, Tarrant leaned back, off one step and snapped a goal from just outside the fifty. The poncho muffled claps of 40,000 people nearly drowned out the rain.

Two points up, probably not enough of a lead to protect but the signs were worrying for Adelaide. Fremantle had control of the ruck, they were tackling hard, getting the ball out of the stoppages, their defence was rock solid and, as the rain started to clear as quickly as it came,  the forward line looked ready to explode. They were playing with all the heart and passion that Shaun McManus has displayed in his 199 games so far.

Going in Adelaide’s favour was the fact that they kicked the next two goals.

For all of Fremantle’s dominance, they were having a small problem around the goal area. Apparently when you channel Macca’s heart and passion, they throw in his kicking for free. Balls were going out of bounds on the full, straight into the arms of Adelaide players and, occasionally, through for a minor score.

Luckily, in a brief moment of sanity, Ryan Crowley was able to slot one through on the siren to peg the margin back to 3 points going into quarter time.

Subiaco Oval was bathed in sunshine by the time the second quarter got under way.  Unfortunately that didn’t mean conditions were good for footy.  You know when Adelaide come to town you’re in for some ugly, hard fought footy. Throw in a swirling, crazy wind that seemed to be possessed by the spirit of Clive and a wet slippery ground and it wasn’t exactly champagne footy on display.

A rare mistake by Roger Hayden gave the Crows an early goal but they hardly got a sniff after that. Unhappy with the blot on their scoresheet, the Fremantle defence tightened back up and made sure the Crows were going to have to do a lot better than hoping for a Burton specky in the square every time they went forward.

The better the Fremantle defenders did, the more chances they got to put their devastating run out of defence into action. Unfortunately the devastation didn’t get too much further than the wing. The pace of the Crows was giving the Fremantle players trouble as they struggled to get away and create some space.

What was giving them more problems though, was the fact that when they did get the ball into attack, the kicking by the forwards brought into question whether they knew where they were supposed to be aiming. It got so bad that Chris Connolly was in danger of getting a fine for having the sprinklers on after a rain shower.

After closing the gap the hard way, one point at a time, Troy Cook decided to bring his superior kicking skills out to give show the high priced pretty boys how it’s done. He said goodbye to technique, kissed routine goodbye and he didn’t worry about being in the perfect position. He threw the ball on this boot, it bounced just outside the goal square and did James Hird proud by bouncing untouched around 5 blokes for a goal.

No one really seemed to learn that much from Cookie’s escapades but it was a handy goal to have kicked when the margins were being calculated as the half time siren sounded. The Dockers 3.7 to the Crows 4.2 had Fremantle dominating but a point behind.

After a half time spray that saw Chris Connolly chuck a Nisbett (as they’re now calling it) on his players, there wouldn’t have been too many in the Fremantle camp who hadn’t worked out that the big white sticks were supposed to be the general target when shooting for goals.

Well, that’s what you’d think. Records were being re-written in the opening minutes of the third quarter when Fremantle had 6 shots at goals for just one point. Fremantle hit the front when Burton outscored them all by rushing a behind.

Every time the Crows tried to get it out of the Fremantle forward line it’d get cut off at half back and Roger Hayden would weave his way through the Crows huddle to give the forwards another shot at kicking a goal. The odd time they got past Roger, Antoni Grover was lurking on the goal line to pluck the ball out of the air and send it Roger’s way again. But as the points continued to rack up for Fremantle and the boundary umpires grew ever closer to hernia operations, it was only matter of time before something slipped through the cracks and, after a very suspicious chain of handballs, Bock kicked the Crows back into the lead.

Half a quarter without kicking a goal. Fremantle were starting to feel like the Eagles. Josh Carr was wondering how he’d look covered in baby oil. It wasn’t a good place to be. When Pav started feeling the need to run to the bench and spew, something had to be done.

When another attempt to kick a goal resulted in a boundary throw in, Luke “Mr Fix-it“ Webster struck. From nowhere, he flew at an unsuspecting Michael Doughty, the ball spilled to Dean Solomon who ran in and put the Dockers back in front.

The crowd suddenly sprung to life after several were feeling urges to take up knitting and leave the ground early to beat the traffic. Luckily the Webster/Solomon combination had opened the flood gates.

As quickly as they’d cheered on Solomon, they were booing Van Berlo. A series of suspicious handpasses allowed him to kick another goal and give the Crowd back the lead. In stepped goal sneak Troy Cook.

Luke McPharling goosified a couple of Crows at half back before he kicked it long to Ryan Crowley on the wing. One of the key backers of the boot it long policy, Crowley booted it long to the waiting pack of forwards. About 3 million dollars worth of footballers went up for the ball. None of them could do anything with it. As it hit the deck, the man who plays for a couple of vegemite sandwiches and a place to bleed at the end of the game swooped in. His reputation had beaten him to the ball and players stepped back for fear of hospitalisation. He picked the footy up unopposed, hooked it around on his right foot and Fremantle went into the last change with a two point lead to protect.

The scene was set for a perfect finish to Shaun McManus’s milestone. Like his career, the game hadn’t always been pretty but it wasn’t going to come down to who was the prettiest. God knows he wouldn’t stand a chance in that contest. It was going to be about who could hang in there the longest. Who could keep running when their legs were aching, who could throw themselves at the ball when they knew another knee in the back was going to hurt like buggery, who could keep trying when the bloke yelling from the cheap seats was telling them how useless they are.

Kicking a bit straighter wasn’t going to do any harm either.

The first goal came for Fremantle in extraordinary circumstances. Troy Cook spotted his target from twenty yards back and set off after Simon Goodwin. Goodwin heard him coming but had nowhere to run. As the Troy Cook express hit him, Goodwin got rid of the ball in the usual way but this time the umpire actually called a throw. An Adelaide player called for throwing. Like leprechauns, unicorns and AFL sanctions against the West Coast Eagles, most thought of it as a thing of myth and legend. Cook wasn’t going to hang around to argue though and slotted through goal number 3 before the umpire had time to realise it wasn’t the done thing.

The Dockers were out to a 7 point lead but there was a long way to go yet. They were looking good though. The game was opening up and the Fremantle running game was starting to wind up. The down side was that when it opened up it opened up for Adelaide too and when the Crows levelled the scores again, Fremantle had to go searching for another goal.

But Adelaide’s momentary lapse into excitement had come  and gone and they were back to their bottling up best. Freo hit the front with another display in how not to kick at goals and tested the nerves of the Crows defenders as they held the ball in the Fremantle forward line for what seemed a full set of fingernails and an inch of hairline.

Then, in another display of his panoramic vision, Chris Tarrant spotted a small, bald Korean man standing on his own. He squared the ball to other side of the ground, Peter Bell took the mark, paid tribute to a hung over Jeff Farmer by playing up for a fifty metre penalty, then calmly dobbed the goal.

The Freeee-oooooo rang out around the ground. Fremantle had the lead but there still wasn’t enough time for clock milking. Particularly when the foot skills hadn’t been what you’d described as polished. Goals were needed or at the very least a continuing over supply of behinds.

Then tragedy. A very suspicious series of handpasses saw Ian Perrie sneak through a goal to level the scores. Fremantle hadn’t been in a game this close since a minute after the siren in Tasmania.

The scores were level but apparently someone forgot to point this fact out to a number of the Fremantle defenders.  They seemed to be milking the clock for the draw.  They needed a point and with 13 on the board, they were clearly the most qualified side to get one.

Minutes turned into seconds and neither side had been able to make a play at the goals. Then the clock in Michael Johnson’s head ticked down to a minute. He unloaded with a huge drop punt into the forward fifty. The ball bounced around. Boundary line to ball up and back to the boundary line again.  The Crows were in their element, trying to bottle up the footy. Fremantle just needed to get the ball over the goal line for some sort of score.

As the ball was thrown up with twenty seconds left on the clock, Chris Tarrant leapt over the top of the two hundred and eleven centimetre Aaron Sandilands. He swung his fist at the footy with every ounce of strength he had left. It flew over the 18 Adelaide players crowding around the stoppage and into the arms of Luke Wesbter. As the pack came at him, he took a moment to look up at the clock, then spun around and put it through the goals, skilfully skimming the post on the way through so Adelaide wouldn’t have time to get the ball into attack.

His calculations were spot on. The Crows desperately tried to get the ball down the ground but the clock was on Freo’s side and they already had Shaun McManus on their shoulders when the final siren sounded to declare them the winners.