Fremantle have put in a textbook Ross Lyon performance at the Dome to drop the Bulldogs by a very sensible 38 points. Everything went to script, with the Bulldogs coming out using their dazzling pace to stun the Dockers midfielders, only to hit a wall of moderately sized utilities building a purple wall on the half back line. Unable to find their way through, the Doggies started taking potshots at the goals and grew increasingly frustrated by their inability to score. That’s when the Dockers struck back. The class of Stephen Hill and the irrepressibility of Hayden Ballantyne put Fremantle into the lead, where the Dockers stuck for the rest of the afternoon. A bit of a run on in the third quarter regained the attention of a few of the small Bulldogs crowd but there was no concern in the Fremantle camp and another sensible 4 goals in the last term had them cruise home for an easy win.
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To save people forking over their hard earned money to the AFL in exchange for a magazine that gets bigger every week, making it harder to get to the only part you actually want - the names of the players, we've introduced the Dockerland Budget.
For those people not sure why the football stopped after 10 games, it turns out there was some sort of early season, staggered bye thingy going on and not a week off out of respect for Pavlich’s 300th game. The good news is that that means the team is back into action again this week and we can all get excited about the influx of recovered players that traditionally follow the week off. Luke McPharlin will obviously be a handy addition to the defence, presumably at the expense of Alex Silvagni who is thinking of changing his first name to “At the Expense of Alex” to save time. Garrick Ibboston and Colin Sylvia have battled their way back into bench contention after extended stints on the sidelines waiting for the effects to kick in from first class leeches and snake venom that Fremantle were using to heal their various injuries. Brady Grey has also joined the bench after stringing a few games together for Peel. Matt deBoer is the only exclusion so far, with the bench needing to be cut down before the game.