Week one of Fremantle's bye month hadn't gone as well as hoped. The scenario was pretty straight forward. Four dud teams lined up back to back for Fremantle to smash, driving their way up the ladder with percentage boosting wins. The first leg, against the Bulldogs, has been more of a routine consolidating win by a team at the top of the ladder, bored that the finals were still weeks away; but week two, against Melbourne, was sure to be Freo's best chance to hand out a humiliating smashing of a once proud club.
Melbourne's injury list was longer than their membership list, which is still not that long but they were missing a handy player or two, they were down on confidence, down on form and their record at Etihad Stadium was even worse than Fremantle's. They were fish, Etihad was a barrel and Fremantle were the shotgun.
It turns out that fish in a barrel shooting caper is a lot harder than people who do that sort of thing would have you believe.
Melbourne opened the game with three straight goals. The Fremantle supporter was devastated. The Melbourne supporter was ecstatic.
It was terrible start to a game of footy. Fremantle had attempted to reverse the trend of being overly defensive and with too rigid a structure by not being in any way defensive and laughing in the face of structure.
Of course, Melbourne are still a terrible football club so even with no defense or structure or a bloke who could hit a handball target, Fremantle managed to fight back.
Hayden Ballantyne slotted one through from the fence, presumably thanks to the helpful advice he was being given by the Melbourne supporter on the other side. Stephen Hill ran the length of the ground to dob Fremantle's second one, using his patented kicking style traditional used by small kids in oversized, longsleeve jumpers in the rain. Then Tendia Mzungu levelled the scores, taking a lovely mark from an even lovelier pass from Roberton and kicking a quite nice goal.
So it was just a bit of a minor hicup. Half a quarter gone - crisis over. At 3 goals each, Fremantle could steady for another ten minutes before going to work on the soul destroying thrashing in the remaining three quarters. What could be easier.
Apparently a few things - tackling and marking not being two of those things.
Melbourne hit another patch of competence and jailed three more goals as Fremantle looked to be struggling with the Saturday morning start to the game, playing the sort of spaz footy they usually reserve for the end of the third quarter.
When quarter time rolled around, Fremantle were 20 points down. The Melbourne supporter was doing cartwheels while the Fremantle supporter started to wonder if maybe he should just swallow his pride and apologise to the Gypsy.
Ross Lyon wasn't getting caught up in all that crass business of goals for and goals against, though. He's more of a steady as she goes sort of man rather than a full speed ahead and was confident of reigning things in, slowing the game down and passing Melbourne at a sensible, pre-designated pace.
And so, everything returned to his master plan when the second quarter got under way. Fremantle slowed things right down. There was no sight of the frenetic pace Melbourne had set in the opening minutes, with the Dockers organising themselves a bit better and Melbourne already a couple of men down.
A handy goal from Kepler Bradley, after sensible 10 minutes of scoreless field play, and then another cheeky one from Ballantyne had the Dockers move within 8 points and everyone accepting that Fremantle would cruise past the Demons with little fanfare and not much effort.
Melbourne's biggest problem is that they don't really know their place. For some reason they decided to show some fight for the first time this season and countered some of Fremantle's desire to lock the ball by booting it long to blokes standing about in a forward line.
They hit back with two goals as Fremantle continued to phone (some of them Skyped it in to save on STD rates) the game in but Pav kicked another steadier (formerly known as a poster) to take Fremantle into the long break a couple of goals down.
As they players headed in for their sports cordial, and Cameron Schwab headed down to Bunnings to get some tarps to cover all the empty seats, the temptation would have been there to change things up. Melboune would have been tempted to go on the defense and try and hold their lead in the second half; and Fremantle would have been tempted to go on the attack and try and develop some sort of lead.
But you don't become an AFL coach by changing things - you become n AFL coach by completing a 2 week course and making a Powerpoint presentation about synergies. So, while Schwabby tried to tie down the tarps, the players ran back out onto the ground to try and do more of the same.
Of course, a week earlier against the Bulldogs, Fremantle had used the start of the third quarter to blitz their opposition and shut the gate on the game, so the Fremantle supporter was pretty optimistic that Freo could take the lead and storm home for an inspiring win.
It wasn't exactly the football clinic that Pavlich produced to wipe out the dogs but, after a pedestrian start, Freo got the scoreboard moving at a steady pace. Clancee Pearce, who had been down on confidence after loosing the mantle of "Most Neck Tattoos' in the side, unloaded from the centre square to bounce a sensational goal through.
They followed that up when the reigning "Most Neck Tatttoos" champion, Michael Walters threw his weight around, goosified two Melbourne blokes, took a grab and booted the footy through the goals.
Pav chipped in with handy one from fifty to give Fremantle the lead and everyone settled in for an afternoon of calculating percentage.
Possibly one of the reasons that Melbourne spend so much time not winning is because they find counting just too much effort. They were having none of this percentage boosting business for Fremantle and, despite Fremantle carrying on as if they'd been in front all day, the Demons very quickly took back the lead and set about embarrassing the Freo players and driving the Freo supporters to various acts of violence and/or gardening.
Four goals went through at Melbourne's end to push the margin back out to 20 points. Schwabby was having to pull down the tarps as Melbourne supporters flooded into the stadium to watch the unthinkable unfold. Fremantle had managed to do what very few teams have ever done - they gave Melbourne supporters hope. First they showed up, then they started paying attention to the game, then they were making noise and cheering things. It had been years since a group of Melbourne supporters had smiled together, outside of a ski resort. It was a horrific site.
Luckily Fremantle had couple of handy forwards who could over come issues with delivery by booting goals from somewhere outside fifty. Despite not being able to see his feet past his man boobs, Micheal Walters returned another ball over the goal umpire's head and Pav jailed is third for the day to salvage a bit of pride going into the three quarter time break.
They were still 7 points behind but Fremantle had not a care in the world. It had never occurred to them that they might not win the game, it was the by month after all. Ross Lyon ran them through the various talk of plus ones, centre forward zone defences and the appropriate amount and direction of spreading, then sent them back to get the four points.
Meanwhile over in the Melbourne camp they were firing themselves up for a heroic win and a big night of celebrations down at the local wine bar.
It took Fremantle a good minute to reel the Demons in.
Michael Barlow snapped a goal, over his shoulder using a leg contortion normally not seen on a football ground unless Chris Judd has noticed someone is pinned to the ground, to get the scoring rolling. Mayne followed it up with one of his standard dead straight numbers that have the goal umpires' union concerned he might render their jobs obsolete, to give the Dockers the lead - at which point a big blue and red towel was thrown onto the ground.
With Melbourne conceding the game, a few of the Fremantle players decided to break ranks and have a bit of fun around goals. Barlow got back into the action with much more traditional forward facing kick for goal and Michael Walters freaked out a bunch of Melbourne members when he dobbed a lazy one from fifty and then celebrated with a leap into the air last seen by a Melbourne crowd when Shaun Smith was taking hangs in the goal square.
The goals kept coming with Pav working his way up the Coleman Medal ladder, Hill cementing the 3 Browlow votes and Clancee Pearce salvaging some lost tatt pride with beauty off the ground.
When the final siren sounded, Fremantle were a sensible 34 points in front and would head into the halfway point of bye week knocking on the door to the top 8, with just the elusive percentage keeping them out of the action.