Second last round of rankings folks, and both of you who have lasted this long should be congratulated. 

Some will see this season as a cause for mass sackings and the joining together in groups of 30 odd idiots and campaigning to the Premier for legalising lynchings for a brief period to ensure that there is more Freo at Freo.  Happily not much of this is yet evident.

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I know losses like that don't REALLY matter at this time of year, but some of the efforts in the second half were pretty hard to swallow.  Having said that, this is what really sucks about supporting a bottom team at this time of year, losses help if you're interested in the draft and I find myself not caring that much.

A bright spot from yesterday was Kiwi Campbell.  Not only was his long and accurate kicking a pleasure to watch, his attacks on the ball were also a real delight, as long as you were wearing a Dockers jumper anyway.  He adds something that our other forwards don't, a hard hitting physical presence.  He's on my list of keepers for 2009.  Credit too to Paul Duffield who is having a pretty good time of it at present.

As much I as dislike Richmond and anything Terry Wallace, it was nice to see them win on the weekend for Richo.  For so long he has been a goose of the highest order.  Always fun to watch as an opposition supporter because he would invariably give you plenty to laugh at in amongst his occasional brilliance.  This year however he has been special for good reasons.  There is no way he can keep this up for more than another 1 or 2 seasons, but if he does go longer than that, he will have drastically remade himself in the latter stages of a good career.

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A few quick hit points before I rank... 

i) I'm glad that game didn't matter to us on the weekend or I would have probably carved Adam Goodes' likeness in to my leg with a fork out of sheer annoyance.  As it is, we didn't win but it kind of felt like we did.

ii) Not for the first or last time, I was wrong a few weeks back when I said we had a lock on pick 3.  It now seems that port have that pick.  Hopefully there is a kid in Adelaide who can play a bit and we still end up with Rich.

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I have to say that I've been a bit reticent about posting my thoughts on this game, largely because a lot of what I planned to say has been said already.  So I'll keep things brief.

It's pleasing that Shaun McManus, in his final appearance in the glorious anchor, was able to reflect on a most wonderful turning of the tables.  Seasoned members of the purple army will no doubt recall that many of the early derbies were won by The Enemy playing one blistering quarter and coasting for the rest of the game as the Dockers matched them, but were unable to make any inroads.

Well, this time around, it was we who played a blistering quarter and all our opponents could do was cough up a few feathers in response.  They managed to summon one sustained comeback after our opening barrage - but tellingly, when Freo were dead on their feet in the final quarter, the Eagles looked totally unable to make a meaningful assault and the game degenerated into tired circle work.  It's been a long time coming, but hopefully we can squeeze another few years of dominance out of it to even up the ledger.

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What has interested me in recent weeks is how some of the more controversial members of the team have taken the decisions on their careers out of the hands of others and seen it as a decision they needed to make. 

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Apologies to those scant few of you who regularly read my blog - a heavy workload during the week has prevented me from telling of my second journey to AAMI Stadium before now.  It's certainly not that the first Freo win I have seen on the road this year has struck me dumb!

While the announcement before the game that Pav's long run of consecutive matches had come to a surprising end may have sent shudders through many members of the Freo faithful, it actually made my feelings about the game ahead more bullish.  With astonishing cleverness, Harves and the coaching staff had hyped Rhys Palmer's knee all week, allowing Pav's knee problem to go completely unnoticed and I knew it would catch Port's defence off guard.  And it did.

The team seemed determined to prove to the critics that Fremantle is not a one-man band; this despite me seeing some evidence to the contrary at numerous points this year!  But fittingly, there was no one member of the team who stood out above the others, and none which noticeably played poorly.  The fact that all but 6 of them kicked a goal demonstrated this evenness perfectly.

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2 in a row and heading for 3.  However apparently, it is the "reseurgent" Eagles who are the form team heading in to the Derby this week.  We all expected that I guess.

What noone expected was for Lynch and Staker to be "heroes" in a Budgie win.  Suddenly they have found the solution to what ails them.  All they need is for Lynch and Staker to play that "well" every week and they're golden. 

Isn't that like saying "all we need is for Osama Bin laden to come out of hiding and we can sort this war stuff out"?

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These are the times of the everyday hero 
This is the battlefield of the working man 
Trying to survive, staying alive, giving it all that he can 
With a fire in his soul that keeps burning 
And a dream in his heart that won't die 
Living day to day, there's no easy way in this everyday life.

OK, we're back and with a bit more time this week, which sucks for you lot because I have some time to type away on a few of the hot topics.

Firstly, I was told on the weekend that the mob down the road are targeting Leigh Colbert as an Ass Coach.  Now I like to support those in the community with diminished faculties as much as anyone else, but this is a bit much isn't it?  And aren't they already doing that with Sumo? 

Maybe with the sponsorship deal with Channel 7 the Budgie hierarchy aren't able to watch other channels, because if they were, they'd see this bloke has as much trouble putting together a meaningful sentence as I have walking past an unguarded donut on a plate.  A highlight of this potential move for me came on the weekend when this mental colossus remarked that someone was being moved from "the forward line to down back so they can be more better at holding up the opposition in the middle contest". 

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I have little sympathy for those who were baying at quarter time yesterday that the coaching panel and players should be lined up before a firing squad.  After all, it was only Melbourne we were playing - and true enough, we came good in the end.

But for the first quarter yesterday it did seem like I had never left the MCG after the disaster against the Demons in Round 7, because they certainly began as they had finished that game.  Well, kind of.  Because Freo were so woeful, it obscured the fact that Melbourne were having trouble hitting a barn door at three paces themselves.  As usual.  Although I was hardly happy at the unexpected turn of events, I knew that if we could sort things out we would catch them as they ran out of puff.

And so it proved to be.  Once the defence and midfield realised that they had to actually tackle their opponents, and stopped trying to kick it to Pav 100% of the time, we gradually gained acceleration.  Even if Supermac and Tarrant didn't have their kicking boots on all day, they were well supplied and well supported.  The Dealer certainly adds some buzz to the forward half and works tirelessly, even if Browne himself hasn't quite yet got the knack of getting himself into the game.  He and Ryley Dunn could certainly go some way towards solving our half forward problems.

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