Here's a bit of history:
So the idea of the (daggy, dorky - no argument from me) Rock and Anchor ceremony was to give the start of our games something ritualistic, but also something that worked in time and connected some club elements (song, anchor, banner (once we parted ways with the blow-up container) and, of course, the team). And to do it every time.
I'd always love the various ceremonies that began the FA Cup final - what made them great was that they happened every year, in the same order. Abide With Me makes no sense as a song before a soccer match, except in its own right. It's repetition that makes ceremonies work, not variety.
So our idea was to do everything exactly (to the second if possible) the same every home game. We also wanted to use the build of the club song (which was, in its first version, a bit too long) rather than have it playing away endlessly while the ream was out there.
I'd heard of an experiment conducted in the US where some researchers got the first train out of Jersey City to NYC every morning to leave 30 seconds late. As the train rumbled past an apartment building only a minute or so from the terminal, everyone in the block woke up with a start - because the train DIDN'T come. We thought we could maybe achieve the same sort of response to an event.
So, anyway, at 12.10 minutes before bouncedown, we'd start the club song and The Rock would trundle out toward the centre. The late great Con Regan would herd the cats players so that they ran out and through the banner exactly at the "grunt" at the end of the bridge in the song, the exact moment our Docker would heave the anchor out of the rock (yes, yes, Excalibur, King Arthur etc etc) and the crowd would go mental – but also know there was EXACTLY 10 minutes to bouncedown (beer, slash etc).
I'm not going to pretend it worked exactly every time, or even often, but our bit did (bloody Neesham/Drum/Connolly). But I did like that there was a visible and audible moment when people looked toward the race just before the ceremony started, so the New Jersey experiment did have something going for it.
We embellished the whole ceremony with a couple of extra songs – Randy Newman's Follow the Flag and Dave Warner's Fremantle is the Heart and Soul of Football, but the core stayed exactly the same, rain, hail or shine, for nine seasons and over 100 home games. Of course it was a big part of the Len Hall Game ceremony when that was a production number.
My only regret is that one game we let Channel 7 get a couple of the "Gladiators" (remember them) replace the Docker and lift the anchor. I think the crowd hated it, and I did too.
For the record, the Rock and Anchor was designed by the wonderful Lesley Zampatti and manufactured at Arts Workshop in Belmont. It was licensed to go on public roads (and some of you will remember we used to haul it from Fremantle Oval to Subi Oval for the first home game of the season for a few years). The ropes were"requisitioned" by, I think, some MUA guys from a tug. I'm sure that was all above board.
There were two anchors, and an extra one made each year to replace one that was given to great club supporters (YAKKA, Sid Corser, Deckchair Theatre, Ross Kelly).
The rope crew were all RAN personnel from Garden Island and their families, and they became a really important group of supporters for the club in the early days. There were some fantastic people in the Rope Crew, and I still see some of them at games all these years later.
So there you go. I hope it finds a good home.
