This game was another opportunity for Fremantle to demonstrate that they could mix it with the best in the league. Over the past couple of seasons the criticism of Freo has at least changed from "They struggle" to "They struggle away from home" and after the win against Collingwood, it became "They struggle against quality opposition away from home." Essendon having six of their last seven, and sitting in 6th place, just belowe Freo, were indisputably quality opposition, so the question was whether or not Freo would be able to beat them, or failing that, at least push them.

The answer to that question seemed to be "yes" at the start of the first quarter, with Freo seeming to cope pretty well with the pre-bounce niggle that Essendon tried to inflict and Roger Hayden sneaking forward to score the first goal of the game. After that, though, things started to slide downhill. Essendon got a goal after the umpire was very generous in his definition of a mark to Lloyd, and then they kept peppering the goals for a series of behinds. Finally Freo managed to break out of that bottleneck, and Pavlich scored a goal from about 50. Pavlich's goal should actually have been a warning sign to the Freo coaches though. Fremantle were playing a game plan where the defense were working hard to bottle up the space inside 50, which was fine, except that it left players free at or just outside 50, and inside Telstra Dome, that was certainly scoring range. A combination of that game plan, Parker's insistence on kicking in to Hird, and some random free kicks being paid to Essendon forwards meant that Essendon were able to extend out to lead 4.7 to 2.1 with about 5 minutes game time left in the quarter. Freo battled pretty hard for the rest of the quarter, but were only able to add a point, and even that came at the cost of Byron Schammer, who was cleaned up by a Scott Lucas bump, and is apparently likely to miss at least the next two weeks.

The start of the second quarter was not pretty for Freo. Essendon won pretty much all of the centre breaks, and started kicking goals instead of points. Haddrill got moved on to Lloyd, but that didn't stop Lloyd kicking 3 for the quarter and 5 for the half. I think it was five goals in a row for Essendon before Freo were able to work it forward, and Des Headland got a goal with his first touch of the game. Freo were a bit better in the last part of the quarter, with Roger Hayden setting up three attacks in a row, all of which ended up as behinds.

Having kicked 3.5 for the first half, Freo were 54 points behind Essendon at half time, and 7 points behind Lloyd personally, and things were looking pretty grim. Their forward line seemed to be pretty disfunctional, and they were certainly being beaten in the midfield. The team in Freo colours did at least manage to win the little league, and I have a suspicion that they managed to score more during their game than Freo had in the first half as well.

Freo seemed to start the second half better, but they could only score points, and when Essendon finally sneaked it forward, they managed an easy goal. However after that, it was pretty much all Freo, and they kicked the next 4 goals, to get the margin back to 32 points. Parker was moved onto Lloyd, but it became pretty irrelevant, since the ball hardly ever came down that end. Right on the siren Lovett-Murray kicked a snap that looked on the replays to have been a clear point, but which was paid as a goal, and left Freo 45 points behind at three-quarter time.

The final quarter started with a throw from Hird to Lovett-Murray for another goal, and Freo were pretty much back to where they were at half time. Fremantle then got another run on, and with 8 minutes left in the game, they reached a point where they were 25 points down, with Bell to have a shot on goal from about 35m out. Bell hit the post pretty much full on, and that was pretty much it. The only other highlight was Lloyd launching himself into a pack to try to take a screamer, only to have it paid to his team mate Bolton as the man in front.

It really was a game of two halves. In the first half, Essendon were very good, and Freo were poor. In the second half, Freo looked a lot better, and Essendon made a lot more mistakes. Freo changed the game plan at half time, and actually played man on man, which I think they probably should have been doing all along - or at least from quarter time on. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. To me, Freo played the first half as a team that didn't want to be embarrassed, and ended up 54 points down, which was pretty embarrassing in itself. In the second half, they decided to take more risks, and to be more attacking, and it paid off. Hopefully they'll learn something from that.

Now for some positives and negatives. I thought Hayden played pretty well throughout the game. Pav seemed to give Freo something in the second half, and he wasn't woeful in the first half. Longmuir, J. got thrashed in the ruck, but he did some good things in the second half too. That was about it. Medhurst had maybe three touches for two points, and failed to chase his opponent as usual. Farmer ran around and tried to be creative, but ultimately missed a couple of good opportunities from on the run at about 50. Bell's game was fair to middling at best, not least of all because he failed to kick the goal that was needed for Freo to continue to have a sniff in the last quarter. Gilmore managed to get some of the ball, but his delivery into the forward line seemed to consist of high up and under kicks, which gave no one any chance, least of all a small foward line like Freo played with for most of the game.

Now for my whinge about the umpires. There were plenty of decisions that I was unhappy with during the course of the game. Would they have made a difference to the final outcome? Probably not, but they still frustrated me. My main complaint though was with the inconsistency in the free kicks that were paid at either end. The most obvious example occurred in the last quarter. Freo kicked the ball forward to Longmuir, who was being wrestled by Allen. The ball spilt free, no free kick. The ball then travels to the other of the ground, where Hille and MacPharlin are also wrestling, before Hille breaks free and crashes through Hayden. Free kick to Hille. The fact that Fletcher repeatedly had arms draped over Simmonds' shoulders, with no penalty being paid, while Lloyd got a couple of goals from soft free kicks also had my blood boiling.

Final Score : Fremantle 12.13-85 lost to Essendon 17.13-115

© 2004 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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