Unfortunately the Cats weren't to the job but even more unfortunate was the manner in which they did it. Alex Silvagni spent much of the match expressing his thoughts on the state of affairs through the medium of shouting, to the point that he lost his voice and was suffering from a sever throat infection by morning. It was so bad that the doctors had to rule him out for the game (obviously the club couldn't list him as out with an anti-West Cost tirade related injury so they just called it the flu) and replace him with Dylan Roberton.

 

Meanwhile, some of the other Fremantle players went to bed early so they could wake up again in time to watch WA's own Steve Hooker not jump anything at the Olympics. Nat Fyfe is keen follower of  people not jumping over things and was up to watch the lack of action. It was all over pretty quickly so he wasn’t up for long but before heading back to sleep, Fyfe made a quick trip to the loo, forgetting that he was rooming with Ballantyne. As per usual, Ballas had left his Tonka toys all over the floor, Fyfe slipped on a truck and was out for the game claiming a rolled ankle. 

 

So when Fremantle arrived at Football Park the next morning, they had a couple of problems. Firstly they were undermanned and secondly, after being let down by both Geelong and Steve Hooker, there were several pending assault charges from any encounters they had with Rangas on the way to the ground. 

 

Ross Lyon wasn't all that concerned about losing a couple of players, they all look the same to him anyway. He threw in a couple of blokes who were hanging around, inspired them with some slogans and then sent them out to become men. 

 

It was a tough road to manhood. Fremantle started like a team of blokes who'd been up all night watching sport, as the Crows prepared the ground work for running amok. 

 

Luckily for Fremantle, Adelaide have what sports experts refer to as Spaz Legs in front of goals and gave Fremantle a chance to wipe the sleep from their eyes and get back in the game. After ten minutes of Adelaide dominating the footy and making Fremantle look slightly below ordinary, for just one goal, Fremantle struck back through Hayden Ballantyne to pretty much level the scores.

 

The Adelaide crowd didn't know what had hit them. They were literally stunned mullets. Stunned, flannelet wearing mullets.  They'd felt like they were already 5 or 6 goals up but a quick check of the scoreboard suggested their calculations had been off...by 5 or 6 goals. 

 

The Adelaide players were in a bit of shock too and Fremantle's sudden entry into the game straightened them up a bit, dobbing through a couple of back to back goals but the damage had been done. They should have opened up the gap when they had the chance, Fremantle were officially in fight back mode now. 

 

Matt deBoer brought up the second goal after he courageously held his ground in  marking contest and was rewarded by having his head knocked off, and then being given fifty. Michael Barlow followed deBoer's lead, holding his ground and appearing to use some sort of Jedi mind trick to stop anyone else in the pack of 8 players from landing a hand on the footy. 

 

Clancee Pearce kicked a sensational goal to put Fremante into the lead but the umpires stepped in, dusted off some archaic rule about the ball having to come off a players foot and the goal was downgraded to a behind.

 

To rub salt into the wound, a highly suspicious free kick went Adelaide's way and Thompson kicked  late one to give the Crows an 8 point lead going into the first change. 

 

It hadn't been the awesome display of awesome awesomeness that Fremantle had produce to sink the Eagles a week earlier but the workman like performance seemed to be getting the job done. They looked happy this week to sit one out and one back for the afternoon and pick off the Crows once their spaz legs had kicked them out of the game. 

 

Fremantle came out firing in the second quarter. Well, Ross Lyon firing. They shut the game down to the point where even Adelaide supporters found it boring.  They kept the Crows goalless for 10 minutes before Ross found himself holding back a yawn - that was the signal to unleash The Pav. 

 

Patiently waiting in Fremantle's forward half, wondering what the 3 department stores might be that the Rundle Mall was so proud of having, Pav looked up to see Chris Mayne bolting at him with a footy in hand. Mayne kicked it long and Pav headed for the goals. He marked the ball, waltzed in and spotted up his cousin in the back row with a free footy. 

 

The spaz legs kicked in to give the Crows a bit of a break before Johncock manged to get one to go generally straight and give Adelaide a bit of a buffer. 

 

It wasn't a big enough buffer though, Fremantle were using the large empty space often referred to as their forward line to great advantage. Matthew Pavlich did his best to once again bring sadness to Footy Park with a demonstration of what they had missed out on, running the sort of calculations usually only talked about when NASA is landing a Roomba on Mars, and landing a pass on Chris Mayne's chest in a spot that he could only have seen using his rumoured mutant  sonar abilities 

 

Mayne did what he does and Fremantle moved back to within 5 points...before Adelaide had a very frustrating reply. 

 

There was a bit of brilliance from Stephen Hill, sharking an Adelaide kick out with his extendo arms and drilling the goal to peg it back to 4 points and then Kepler Bradley put the Dockers in front with a beauty from deep in the pocket. 

 

The mullets were stunned once more. The Fremantle supporter slunk down in his seat for fear of waking up the next morning in some sort of barrel. It was an outrageous performance by the Dockers, playing without much of a backline and down a Fyfe, they were beating the good things for the flag on their own ground. 

 

The rules were stretched to their limits to allow Adelaide the reply and restore some sense of order to the local mindset on the half time siren but they were far from comfortable with where they were at. After being in control around the ground but blowing so many chances in front of goal, it was hard to understand how Adelaide hadn't been able to get a bigger lead but, at the same time, hard to believe Fremantle weren't in front. 

 

While things looked to be going their way, there was more trouble for Fremantle at half time with Chris Mayne unable to distinguish between a brush and a comb after receiving a heavy knock just before half time (in hindsight, the Fremantle doctor should probably have devised a better concussion test)  and the Dockers were down a golden booted forward. 

 

When Freo ran out for the second hf, their lack of first choice blokes started to show. Adelaide were still suffering from the spaz legs but, by sheer weight of numbers meant they eventually got a couple to go through.

 

Michael Walters stepped up to fill in for Mayne's missing boot skills, slotting a couple through and delighting the Fremantle supporter in the process but the Freo defenders were under seige and the blokes in the middle were working hard enough trying to fill the gaps let alone running forward again to cover the gaps up there.

 

Lachy Neale showed his class out of the green vest to help keep Fremantle in touch but by three quarter time the Dockers had dropped back to 22 points down and seemed to have lost all their momentum. There was still plenty of time to get it back though. Despite being effectively belted, they hadn't actually been belted and they'd kept themselves in the game with some fancy work around goals. With the wind at their back and a bit of luck they were every chance to bring home their biggest scalp of the season. 

 

Freo couldn't have started better (well, they probably could have called for a head count and had Adelaide's score taken back to zero for having too many players on the ground but that seems a bit far fetched...they’re notoriously good at counting). They carefully worked the ball out of the middle, finding Clancee Pearce hanging over the fence trying to get some chips to go with the chicken salt he'd bought. Pearce put down his food for a moment, grabbed the ball in one hand, threw it on his boot and snapped a magnificent goal. Then he tried  couple of chips before heading off to the bench where he found a need to drink all the water he could get his hands on. 

 

It was a good start but they just couldn't shake the Crows. Bernie Vince got one back before Pav dobbed one from the centre square but back to back goals seemed beyond Fremantle. They clung to the Crows as long as they could but eventually they just couldn't cling any more and Adelaide shut the gate with a flurry of jaggy goals to win by 28 points.