The last time Fremantle headed to the east coast to play in a final, Heath Black had them driving around the streets of Sydney looking for the Adelaide Oval. Things didn’t go well from that point. Flash forward four years and FREO Speedwagon was once again full to capacity and this time headed for Melbourne. Heath Black doesn’t have a license nowadays so when the team loaded up in the speedwagon, they headed straight for the MCG with no detours.

Most of them hadn’t seen the MCG for a long time, some never at all so it was quite the early success but, once again, things didn’t go well from that point.

To start with, Aaron Sandilands had copped a knock to his knee the week prior but Mark Harvey was confident the big fella would be fine. As Sandilands limped down to the forward pocket to start the game, Freo supporters were wondering if they’d underestimated Mark Harvey’s impression of Monty Python’s Black Knight.

Then Fremantle found out that the bunch of flowers and huge box of Quality Streets the umpires had dropped around to the Geelong change rooms before the game was not the only way they were going to offer an apology for enforcing the rules against them in the Qualifying final.

Then Des Headland tripped over someone and buggered up his already quite buggered up leg.

And then came the goals.

A bloody Selwood started the scoring, then Burns, Podsiadly and pretty soon even the drunks and junkies were kicking goals. Fremantle had stood in the middle of the greatest football stadium ever built and froze, like the Geelong supporters’ sense of fashion when they looked upon 1973.

They looked slow, they were fumbling, they barely injured anyone; even Matt de Boer’s hair was listless and lacking  it’s natural body.  Then, all of a sudden, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes and declaring that it was going to finally start spelling it’s name the proper way around; Matthew Pavlich got hold of the footy somewhere in the MCG car park and unloaded for Fremantle’s first goal.

The Fremantle supporters roared. They sensed it was the start of something. A resurgence. A fight back. Finals history in the making.

They get a lot of things wrong at Fremantle.

It was the worst fightback since John Hewson and the Cats put through another three goals as Fremantle desperately scrambled to the quarter time siren, hoping their coach would come up with some sort of brilliant plan to get them back in the game.

42 points down at quarter time, the Fremantle players weren’t filled with confidence when they saw their coach walking out to meet them wearing a cricket jumper (Chris Scott cracking open a can of VB wasn’t helping either) but he soon managed to settle the youngsters down, got them back focusing on the process and then sent them away with the long, vigilant job of pegging back a 6 goal lead against the reining premiers.

Make the 7 goals. With Fremantle’s former bone crunching giant still moving around the ground with the gait of a newborn giraffe, Geelong were carving Freo up in the middle, moving the ball without the usual fear the big man imposes and Podsiadly had kicked another goal in the opening minute.

It was getting hard to see where Fremantle were going to get their goals from. They’d lost the monster, Stephen Hill was looking slow in the boggy Melbourne mud, Mundy could no longer break tackles with flick of hist wrists, Roger Hayden was looking panicky and Anthony Morabito must have Spinal Tapped it on his way out of the change rooms.

But finals often see heroes come from nowhere and Michael Walters decided he quite liked the idea of being an MCG specialists. He shrugged off some Cats, took a handball from and Cat covered de Boer then snapped Fremantle’s second goal. Then hung back as seven Geelong players tried to take a ride on deBoer, swooped on the footy and dobbed another one. Freo had back to back goals.

The Freeeee-ooooooo chant filled the MCG as hope of a second comeback grew. The defense was tightening up, the midfield was getting some of the ball and there was something that could legally trade under the description of a forward line. Sandilands was even starting to look like he could potentially walk up a small flight of stairs (with a strong rail...and a comfortable chair at the top). Unfortunately they were still playing Geelong, so that was barely enough to compete.

Steve Johnson kicked a quick reply before missing another couple. That was the closest thing Freo could get to getting a break and they were happy to take it. They broke their way through the wave after wave of Geelong players they seemed to come at them, SCOS Silvagni took a strong mark at centre half forward, booted it long and Chris Mayne flew in the goal square, bringing down a screamer and kicking a goal.

Freo had the Cats on the run now. They knew that if they could just kick a one or two more before half time and  creep within twenty points by three quarter time, they were in with a shot for a big last quarter.

It was a big ask and Fremantle stumbled at the first hurdle, spraying their couple of shots and going into half time still 41 points down. They’d given their all, taken chances, fought bravely and  won the quarter...by a point.

Mark Harvey was worried. To outsiders it was hard to tell because he was wearing a pair of Hunter S. Thompson RayBans but the players could tell by the way he’d only zipped his tracky top up three quarters of the way.

And he knew that the players knew he was worried but this was a semi final. There were no second chance so he pulled out his special motivations mixed tape. It was the same tape that Kevin Sheedy had used to motivate the Baby Bombers before they won the premiership - of course, at some point in the late nineties Sheed’s had taped over those songs with a series of  experimental musical ideas he and his Japanese, conceptual artist girlfriend were trying out; and copyright laws being what they are, this was mostly Harvey singing Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen songs at a Karaoke bar.

By God that man can belt out a ripper version of Thunder Road. Fremantle came out all guns blazing in the second half. They had the ball on a string as they moved it about down and around the ground. Majestic runs, long kicks and then the magic of Nat Fyfe who was somehow able to collect the ball in  a pack of players, side step his way out and then snap the ball straight between the two big sticks while facing the other way.

The Freo supporters went mad. Their excitement and exuberance was only matched by the Geelong supporters, who a few minutes later were celebrating Wojcinski doing the same thing.

The game was going the way of a great goal for goal, arm wrestle come shootout as the two teams put on their best footy. Unfortunately Fremantle needed the Cats to lay down for a good twenty minutes and lend them a ruckman - it’s not like they didn’t have a perfectly good spare sitting in the grandstand.

But Freo kept firing shots. Pavlich brought down a huge grab inside fifty and drilled another goal. Michael Walters got on the end of a magnificent pass from David Mundy and kicked his third  as Fremantle started to control the tempo of the game.

Something was definitely building this time. Freo had control, Geelong had hit the wall. This was going to be one of the all time great finals, one of the all time great sporting moments...and then Geelong put through two quick goals and Freo were fifty points down again. 

It was going to take something miraculous to get over the line now. Mark Harvey had the St Jude medallion out, Aaron Sandilands was pumped full of horse tranquilisers then had his knee wrapped in an old spinnaker cloth, Matthew Pavlich was stretching out his hamstrings so he could save time and kick his goals directly out of the centre square and Matt de Boer was studying a book of anatomy so when he hit the bastards they’d stay down.

The crowd were doing their part too. The small gang of loyal Victorians supporters had been re-enforced by hoards of native Fremantle supporters who had spent a lot of money and by golly they were going to chant Freeee-ooooooo at the MCG no matter what.

So they did. They did it when Ottens kicked the first goal of the quarter and they still did it when Steve Johnson kicked the second. The game was gone, Fremantle were going to lose but they still gave it one last Freeeeee-ooooooo  just to say - you might have a better team than us but we’ve got a better football club.