A great man once wrote 'If you want my love then you have got it and if you need my love then you have got it. I will not hide it. I will not throw your love away.' Cheap Trick may never have heard of Fremantle, nor a hair brush, but they were sentiments that the port club would have been glad to hear sentimented their way after a very long week.

There is a very good reason why the Derby is a game played at such intensity, mostly because of what happens to the losers, and while Ross Lyon may have not appreciated it before hand, he learnt a few lessons in the brutal aftermath of the loss. 

He and his team were slammed from pillar to, well not post, they didn't tend to get anywhere near them, but everyone was shouting abuse at them; from the old reliable baggers like Robert Walls to blokes no one had ever heard of on obscure late night cable tv shows. Even Jack Sheedy, who's never had a bad word to say about any team from Fremantle that didn't start with a South,  the most one eyed Fremantle bloke going around had pop at them (incidentally, the bloke who took the other eye later found himself blind and with no nose in an unfortunate off the ball incident. To answer your other question - terrible). 

Despite the barrage, Ross Lyon put on a brave face. He reckoned he had a cunning plan to turn things around very quickly and that was just enough hope to get a few of the old faithful to put on their purplish coloured clothing and head off to Subiaco.

With Adelaide chasing a spot on top of the ladder and Fremantle just chasing a chance to leave the ground without falling victim to their supporters' infamous seat cushion attacks,  expectations were low.

But when the siren sounded and Pav booted the ball out of the centre to Hayden Ballantyne, interest suddenly picked up. The Mayor got a bit excited with the $41 on offer for Ibbotson to get the first goal and it turned into a bit of a debacle -  but Fremantle had lined up with a forward line, there were a few blokes hanging back in what you could argue was a back line and the players were running about the place making leads and generally playing football. 

Some were doing it better than others though and Clancee Pearce channeled Dan Parker, kicking the ball straight into Walker’s arms before desperately trying to make a mends while the Crows ran in for an easy goal. Unfortunately for Clancee the Subiaco groundsmen do a very good job and there were no holes to crawl into (one of the advantages of Etihad Stadium) .

Fremantle kept at it though, moving the ball quickly, hitting hard, chasing, leading, kicking with delightful precision...everywhere but in front of goals. The forwards were loving being forward again but they were a but rusty, just nudging the footy either side of the posts while trying to kick improbable goals. 

It wasn't a problem the Crows seemed to be having up the other end and when they ran back down for another rare crack, Callinan jagged on from the Alinta Gas sign. 

Some staging from Dougalas embarrassed himself and the game, particularly when he kicked it out of bounds on the full. It was the motivation and opportunity Fremantle needed to take the next step up and they run the ball down to the ground, Lachy Neale brought his quick hands into the game, dishing out a handball to Mundy who ran in and booted Freo's first while half a dozen Crows players piled on top of Neale. 

Excited by the idea of scoring again, Sandilands smashed the ball out of the middle. Freo dug in and locked the ball into their forward line, until the Crows just gave up and let Pav take a mark. Some suggested Pav may have been over thinking things when he called out a surveying team to help him line up his kick but the proof was in the results, a deadly straight kick to give Freo the lead. 

It was short lived lead though. Ross had fixed up the midfield but he had run out of time to sort out the forwards, with Freo dominating the all important clearances but not making any headway in front of the sticks. The Crows used their defensive rebounding skills to take advantage of that, putting through a couple of quick goals before a vicious assault on Little Hayden Ballantyne put him fifty metres closer to goals and Freo got one back. 

Ballantyne is a bit down on form so there was no bonus goal after the siren.

A highly suspicious call from the umpire gave Adelaide one last goal before the quarter time siren but the Freo supporters were quietly happy with their three goal quarter, despite being two goals behind. 

Ross Lyon picked up on the vibe in the crowd. They were talking amongst themselves, laughing a bit. Perhaps they'd lost interest in the game? So he made a few moves on his magnetic board, gave the players one of his trademark Powerpoint presentations on the iPad and sent them back out to systemically enact a precise game plan. 

Adelaide kicked four goals straight. Each with seemingly less effort than the last. Freo were getting belted. 

The Freo supporters rolling their eyes created  new sporting tradition to rival the Mexican Wave with lap after lap of disapproving eye ball movement, sensing another game slipping away in one bad quarter of football. 

But this this time around things were going a bit differently. The Freo players were getting frustrated. Stephen Hill was on the bring of Hulking as he stood n the wing pleading for the footy from deBoer. deBoer thought about going long until he thought he notice Hill's jumper starting to rip. 

Hill unleashed with a massive kick, 120 metres out and it sailed through for a goal...until the umpire decided he wanted to look at the replay. The replay showed it was clearly a goal and so it was declared point. Modern technology at work. The crowd haven’t booed so hard since Chris Judd wore the blue and yellow. 

It may have been a blessing though because Fremantle's frustration started boiling over all around the ground. They started running a hundred metres just to belt blokes, throwing themselves at the footy, booting it long then hanging around to punch on with their opponent. It was a Hulk outbreak where the angry ruled and the weak were rolled from the ground, with their next of kin notified.  

Michael Barlow shrugged off some puny Crows to get Freo back on the scoreboard before Ryan Crowley, running about in tattered rags, dobbed a couple of majors to send the Dockers into the long break with a 4 goal deficit. 

Despite the margin, the crowd gave them a hearty round of applause as they left the ground - not a cushion raised in anger. 

But the big test for Fremantle wasn’t going to be avoiding cushion attacks at half time, it was going to be the third quarter. They'd willed themselves back into the contest and gained momentum but with the siren putting a dampener on that, the question on everyone's lips (after a few weeks of Cold Pies, 'Fish' & Chips and Stadium Burgers the lips had been freed up from activities such as eating)  was would Freo return from a session of tactics and motivational slogans and still be able hit their stride for the second half. 

It was a bad start, with Porplyzia marking n the pocket in the opening few seconds. Luckily he was the first Adelaide player who didn’t fancy his chances of jagging a goal from a position on the ground with a handy hotdog kiosk nearby. He tried to pass he footy but hadn't allowed for the long arms of Michael Johnson, who went the spoil and sent the the footy down to Mat deBoer. deBoer skilfully pretended to completely bugger up the kick but was actually setting up an elaborate play that would eventually result in anther goal from Peg Leg Barlow. 

Adelaide got one back, against the flow of play, but Fremantle were all over them. They had them on toast in the midfield as Adelaide stared to panic and set up a cowardly flood in Freo's forward line.

It turned out that Chris Mayne was playing and he kicked a handy goal to edge Freo closer but the Dockers just seemed to be lacking one more strong body in defence, where they conceded another one to Adelaide. 

The two teams were going goal for goal but the Dockers needed to do a  bit better than that. Up stepped the captain, running past a pack where he was handed the footy by Greg Broughton (hence forth to be known as Tennille) before leaving a pack of Crows in his wake and sailing home his second. 

Stephen Hill followed up on Pav's awesomeness with a miraculous goal from the middle of a 36 man flood and Freo hit the three quarter time siren with just 9 points left to chase. 

The Crows were trouble.

The Freo crowd had awoken and were ready to unleash weeks of frustration out on their sorry Adelaide arses. The Freo players had hit their stride, Pav was hungry, Hill was angry, Ballantyne was feisty, Sandilands had a thirst for blood and Michael Barlow was happy go lucky. Things were starting to click.

The Dockers burst out of the blocks. A big kick to the forward line saw Chris Mayne stand under the footy so long the pigeons started using him for target practice. He refused to take his eye off the ball though, and when it re-entered the atmosphere he took a leap and brought the footy back down to Earth with him. The kick was a cinch and Freo were a kick from the lead (but it was going to take a lot of shampoo to get his hair clean). 

Adelaide had no answers as Freo worked the  ball out of the middle once again, Hayden Crozier had been on for five minutes and he was already making them look like chumps.

He punched the ball towards Pearce who tried to repeat the long bomb to Mayne but this time Mayne decided to split the pack open. The three Crows players were left drowning in their own blood while Pav swooped in, picked up the ball and gave the cheersquad something to dodge as the Dockers hit the lead. 

The Crowd were ecstatic. Their team had  fought back from more goals down than they'd kicked all game a week earlier. It was a glorious moment to be a Fremantle supporter, hope was restored, the players had done themselves proud as they took a huge step on their 2012 journey. 

Ah crap. 

Adelaide kicked five unanswered goals, Freo downed tools and the game slipped away again, losing by 29.