The Melbourne-based pundits who previewed this game made a big deal out of the fact that Freo had only ever won once at the MCG. A cynic would suggest that this was at least partially because they hardly ever get to play there. Fortunately, I am not a cynic. The othe point that was ignored in all of this was that their one win at the MCG was against Melbourne, back in 1999. Mind you, four years is a long time at the Dockers, and as far as I can tell, there were only three Dockers players who played in that game who also played in this game: Clive Waterhouse, James Walker and Jeff Farmer.

Anyway, it was a fine and sunny day in Melbourne, with very little breeze. The game started out as a bit of an arm-wrestle, with neither side able to penetrate beyond half-forward, and both backlines rebounding pretty well. Finally, Farmer got a goal from a free kick for out on the full. The TV replays showed that Jeffrey didn't really think he kicked the goal, but we take them all. Meanwhile Neitz was getting a fair bit of the ball up the other end, but his tally for teh first quarter was 1.1 and one out on the full. After that there were goals to Carr, Koops and Waterhouse, and Freo led by 4 goals to 1 by quarter time.

Freo started the second quarter full of running, and with more goals. The best of these, for me, was one set up by Super Grover running off half back and passing to Farmer who scored the goal from a set shot. Why was this a good goal? Because Super probably did run too far, and the Golden Boy gave the MCC members a bit of lip after it, so between them they got the Melbourne supporters pretty fired up.

The less said about the second half of the second quarter, the better. Whether it was Freo reducing their intensity, or Melbourne improving theirs is hard to say, but either way Melbourne kicked 4 or 5 goals in a row to be only three points behind at half time. Neitz was their main avenue to goal still, although the umpires started to make it easier for him too, paying a very dodgy deliberate out of bounds against Hadrill to give him one of his goals. Another bizarre incident during this period came when Neitz crushed Walker and Walker went down. While he was down, his opponent ran off and kicked the goal. While the ball was going back to the centre, Neitz approached Walke (who looked fine by now) and, to me, it looked like he apologised to him. Now given that Neitz doesn't have any real qualms about crushing opponents who get in his way, my best guess for this was that he accidentally poked Walker in the eye, and that he was apologetic about that. Either that or Melbourne are starting their recruiting early this year, and have their eye on Walker.

At various times in the middle parts of the game, Fremantle lost Pavlich, Hasleby, Farmer, Sandilands and Hayden off the ground due to injury. Forunately all except for Farmer were able to return and play on, although Pavlich looked very proppy for a while. There were certainly times in the third quarter when I didn't hold out much hope for Freo to cope without these players, but one by one they started popping up again, and all was well.

The third quarter was probably where Freo won the game. For probably the first 15 minutes or so it was an arm-wrestle again, with the teams going gorl for goal, and Melbourne hitting the lead a couple of times. But the big blokes in the Freo forward line finally started to get on top of their less experienced and shorter opponents. Justin Longmuir kicked three for the quarter, and big Aaron Sandilands kicked one duringa bit of a wrestle on the goal line, and Freo finished the quarter with a handy 3 and a bit goal lead.

The quarter finished with Pollack taking a mark in front of Neitz. Neitz wasn't too happy about that, so he crunched Pollack. Given that Freo already had Hasleby off getting bandaged up after a similar incident earlier in the quarter, they weren't too happy about that, so there was a bit of push and shove before the players went to their huddles.

The last quarter was more of the same. Melbourne made a good charge, but it kind of petered out after Haddrill wrestled Neitz on the Melbourne goal line, but didn't get a kick paid againt him. Freo then carried the ball the length of the ground from the resulting kick in, and Longmuir kicked another one, while Neitz was still discussing the issure with the umpire. And that was pretty much that. Longmuir kicked another three goals for the quarter, giving him six for the match, all after half time.

In a lot of ways, I enjoyed this game more than the win over the Western Bulldogs a few weeks ago. One of the reasons for that was because the Dockers ended up winning this game twice - once in the first quarter and half, and then again after half time. Another reason was just that the Dockers had to try a little bit harder in this game, and to deal with some injuries and setbacks. The fact that they did so gave me extra reasons to smile.

In the upshot of the game, Sean McManus and James McDonald got fined for wrestling. The three-quarter time melee apparently didn't attract the attention of the investigators, and obviously neither did Neitz's attempts to decapitate Hasleby and Polak. In fact The Age ran an article that reported that Neale Daniher and David Neitz will be goign to see the AFL umpires boss, Jeff Gieshen, to find out why it is that Neitz doesn't get paid more free kicks.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to make the observation that both sides had 21 shots for goal, and that the Dockers won the game by kicking straighter. This came as a bit of a shock to me, but I think it boiled down to the fact that the Dockers had a better attacking options. Melbourne had to work harder to get their shots at goal, and consequently they sprayed them a bit more.

Final Score : Melbourne 10.11-71 lost to Fremantle 16.5-101.

© 2003 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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