The highlight of the dockerland calendar has come and gone with Clinton Wolf Medal presentation night being held at the Doig Palladium (the tin shed out the back) last night. While none of the players actually showed, they were there in spirit as the medals and trophies were allocated to the winning players. From the Golden Helmet to the CWM, it really was the night of nights.

Much like the Dockers season, things didn't go exactly to plan for the Clinton Wolf Medal Night. Freo supporters will remember that last year's event was marred by the fact that we'd left the Doig Palladium out for rubbish pickup during the season after it had rusted through. Unfortunately, construction of the new Doig Palladium had a projected completion date of early November 2004 but problems with not being able to find the right sort of screwdriver and the cricket coming on the television saw the project abandoned. No one had told the Clinton Wolf Medal Organising Committee about the construction problems though and there was a bit of panic as the guests started arriving. There was a quick rush to move proceedings to the Doig Stadium but there was a lot of old paint tins and unwanted exercise equipment taking up space. Luckily we had the Doig Tarp on standby and were able to hook it up to the Doig Clothesline to create a temporary facility - the Doig Arena.

There was another hiccup when it was time for the entertainment portion of the evening to kick off. Michael Buble had been expected to perform but there must have been a bad connection over the phone and they miss heard the request for Buble - that stripper could belt out a great version of Quando, Quando, Quando though.

It wasn't long before the presentations of awards got underway and first up was the much coveted John Hutton Award for highest goal kicker. Paul Medhurst's run of Golden Helmet victories was brought to an end by the awesome awesomeness of Matthew Pavlich and his 61 goals. It was Pav's first Golden Helmet so was a bit special. Sadly, he missed out on winning the Tony Modra Golden Thongs for the most goals ever in a match with his skylarking against Carlton in Round 16 falling one short.

Then it was onto the Linda Blair Cup which, as you all know, is for the player who has the most possessions in a season. There is a movement to have the name of the award changed to the Bell/Hasleby Medal as it's pretty much a given that one of these two will win it. Things didn't follow the script this year though and with both players struggling throughout the year with injuries, a new contender emerged. It was new comer Heath Black who got the honours with a head spinning 483 possessions, by the end of the season he needed three catholic priests and a lend of the Doig Tarpaulin to sort himself out.

The glamour awards of the night are always as popular as they are controversial, and The Peter Carey Medal for mark of the year was no exception. There were a few contenders this year, who could forget Luke McPharlin leaping over the top of Scott Thornton, or Luke McPharlin leaping over the top of Shane Parker, or that beauty where Luke McPharlin leapt over the top of Steven Dodd or the time Peter Bell had Luke McPharlin leap over the top of him. It was hard work to choose from so many screamers so we saved ourselves the effort and just awarded it to Luke McPharlin. That's when the controversy started. As we were handing out the award, Justin Longmuir jumped in from the side and snatched it out of the air to claim it for himself. Then, as Jlo went back to make his acceptance speech, Leo Barry came in from the other side and took it off him. It was a fiasco - he wasn't even invited to the thing. The last we saw of the Peter Carey Medal, Nick Davis had gotten hold of it and was running across the Harbour Bridge wearing nothing but it and a smile. Hopefully we'll get it back to Luke when things settle down and those Swans blokes stop celebrating - sometime in June 2008 looks the most likely.

There were plenty of memorable goals of the year in 2005 with Matthew Pavlich giving us 61 to choose from, Paul Medhurst and Jeff Farmer continuing to make the difficult look easy and Brett Peake kicking two goal of the week winners in his handful of games. Some will tell you that Peake was a shoe in for the award and, being East Fremantle Royalty, it was pretty hard for the selectors to go past either of his efforts. But there was one man who put his hand up, waved it about in the air and said "I want that 2005 Chrome Aeroplane Award" That man's name is synonymous with excitement, it's screams out showboating, it lairises so much that it refuses to be printed in a normal font.

After playing 199 games tougher than the steaks coming off the Doig Barbeque, Shane Parker finally made it to the 200 mark. Toiling and struggling at full back against trumped up nancy boys for 10 years was enough for Parks. When he saw he was playing on the missing link that throws a dark cloud over Intelligent Design theory and proves man evolved from geese, he decided enough was enough. So, he ran Fevola down the ground, ripped the ball out of a pack in the centre, shrugged off a tackle and kicked his 10th career goal. The bench cleared as players ran from everywhere to celebrate with him and the statues all over Rockingham started to weep. In fact, it's hard to see what Judd to win the AFL Goal of the Year that Parker didn't, other than wear tighter shorts.

Of course we like to take a bit of the focus off the players sometimes and attention soon shifted to the premier WA football media award - the Brodie Holland Medal. It's hard to think of a year where there have been more contenders for the Brodie. Who could forget the coach sacking poll in the paper, the bearded idiot who said Pavlich was no good, the old bloke struggling with senility and his petition, the fat bloke with the nightly radio show crying because he wasn't allowed to pick fights on a website or even Australia's favourite Commentator and his weekly attempt to set up Pav and Chris. There were so many contenders this year we had to call in NASA to calculate the votes but the winner went in hard early and proved himself to be one of the all time great Brodie Medal winners. Kim Hagdorn put himself in front early when he made the statement early in the season a wealthy Freo member should rock up to the club with a Brown paper bag and pay out Jeff Farmer's contract and it proved impossible to run him down. It's his first Brodie but we suspect it won't be the last.

Back to the blokes with ability and some of the less glamorous awards were handed out before the big one. The Scott "Prince of the Pockets" Chisholm Sceptre for the best nickname was a tight contest. By shear weight of numbers Chris Connolly was a short priced favourite, he's picked up a bucket load of nick names this year (few of them able to be repeated) but the 2005 winner of the Prince of Pockets Sceptre went to Jeff Farmer who's transcended the name The Wiz and is now known by one and all as The Purple Jesus.

Jeff Farmer was also defending his Pewter Crank award for best wind up of the year. Poking his tongue out was well received by the fans but seemed to upset the suits about the place but, a bit of a twist saw the quietest man on the ground win the award, with Shane Parker picking up the Crank for his game of knuckles with Fraser Gerhig. It rattled him so much, poor Fraser didn't fire a shot for the rest of the season.

The Maurice Rioli Medal for the best turtle of the season was the least controversial award of the night. Poor old Anthony Koutoufides is still rolling around on the ground trying to tip himself over and get up after Troy Cook knocked him flat on his back in Round 16. If Kouta ever manages to get up, the big dent in the middle of the cricket pitch should play a big part in the Boxing Day Test this year.

The presentation of the Home Brand Award for producing the highest quality while drawing the least attention is always a low key affair. Shane Parker has had a New York Yacht Club style hold on the award for some time now but by winning the Crome Aeroplane and the Pewter Crank he's automatically disqualified himself. Two blokes were nominated for the award this year, Steven Dodd and Ryan Crowley. Unfortunately for One Melee Dodd, he got his name in the paper in the middle of they year and attracted far too much attention to himself so the winner, for making a charge at Jason Norrish's title of The Blanket Man, was Ryan "Creepy" Crowley.

The Dale Kickett Red Boot for most courageous player was one of the most hotly contended awards with more playing carrying busted limbs than a Snowtown rubbish truck. Matthew Pavlich was playing most of the season with one arm, Paul Hasleby struggled with a hernia's cousin, Peter Bell was held together with sticky tape for most of the year but we couldn't go past Justin Longmuir's performance Fremantle's historic victory over Melbourne at the MCG in Round 6 where he knocked the mortician over the head with his leg, escaped, sewed the leg back on and gave Jeff White a lesson in football to get Fremantle over the line in a thriller.

With most of the silverware handed out it was time for the business end of the night, the presentation of the Clinton Wolf Medal. Justin Longmuir got out to a huge early lead, after carrying the side through the early rounds but as the Pavlich juggernaut started to wind up, it was just a matter of time before Jlo stepped aside and handed the lead to the big fella. In the end there was actually only 1 vote in it but Pavlich romped in to become the 2005 Clinton Wolf Medallist.

Congratulations to all winners and we all look forward to seeing you go around again in 2006.