This was my first visit to the new stadium at the Docklands, so I'll start with a few comments about my impressions of the facility. The first was buying a ticket. I had been advised that there would be queues if I attempted to buy a ticket by walking up on the day, so I pre-booked. This cost me $17.25 per ticket for general admission, plus a $5 booking fee, so about an extra $10 for two tickets over the $14.50 I believe I could have paid for a walk-up admission. Since I really hate queues, that was possibly worth it. Maybe. We had seats on the top level (level 4) at about the 50m mark near the Bourke St end goals, and on the city side of the stadium. I have to say the view from there was pretty good, and it was only rarely that I had to glance at the big TV screens for a better idea of what was going on. The food vendors were much more convenient than at the MCG, although I think I would have had to have headed right down to Level 1 for anything more fancy than a pie and drink.

I only have two real complaints about the Docklands experience, apart from the cost of getting to see my team. One would be that booking the tickets was not as easy as it should have been. I tried ringing Ticketmaster's 13 number, but to no avail, so in the end I had to go into Myer to get my tickets. Not a big hassle, sure, but harder than it should have been. The other one was that crossing the bridge back to the city at Spencer St station after the game was extremely slow. And that was with the stadium about half full. it would have been a horror crush with a sellout, I imagine.

In mid-week the Tigers suspended Daffy from this match after he apparently got drunk and involved in an "altercation" while representing the club in Bendigo (or possibly Ballarat). Wherever it was, he wasn't playing against Freo. Richmond also had Wayne Campbell and Darren Gaspar as late withdrawals.

The absence of Gaspar left Richmond with a bit of a problem manning up on Tony Modra. They started with one of the Kellaways on him (Andrew I think), but after Tone had kicked 3.3 in the first quarter they decided a change was in order, and moved Bourke onto him. I'm not sure that Bourke did much better than Kellaway. Modra definitely became quieter in the final 3 quarters than he was at the start, but that had a lot more to do with how often the ball was coming towards him than it did with the quality of his opponent.

The Dockers started extremely well, and ran all over the top of the Tigers for the first quarter and a half. The midfield was working well, with Fletcher and Cook winning the ball out of the centre, and Mcmanus delivering the ball to Modra extremely well.

There were a couple of extremely dodgy moments of umpiring in the third quarter. One of them came after the Dockers had scored yet another point - I think by Callaghan. There was a bit of pushing and shoving on the Dockers forward line, the upshot of which was that a 50m penalty was paid against Modra, which I thought was a bit harsh. None of the Richmond supporters near me seemed to feel it was at all harsh though. Funny that.

The Richmond fans did did agree with me about the other dodgy moment. The happened on the city side wing, just outside of Richmond's attacking 50. The ball was bouncing towards the boundary line when one of the Richmond big blokes (Gale, I think) gathered the ball. He swung around, taking the ball in a big arc, and over the line. The boundary umpire was a bit behind the play, but he whistled and signalled that the ball had gone out. The field umpires didn't notice the signal, and Richmond scored a point. The boundary umpire tried one more time, and then just gave up, and the game went on.

There was another bit of controversy when Stephen Koops cleaned up Torney. Torney was bent over the ball when Koops charged through him, collecting Torney's head with his hip. The result was that Torney had to be stretchered off, and the umpire reported Koops, and paid a free kick and 50 against him. The incident didn't look good, so I can't argue with the free or even the report, but there didn't seem to be any justification for a 50m penalty. Possibly one of the Dockers players made some comment to the umpire, but I certainly didn't see anything to justify it, and I strongly suspect that the umpire just though that giving 50 would help appease the Richmond fans somewhat.

Just a few more comments about the umpiring while I am on a roll. It was bad. The Richmond fans probably can feel hard done by with some of the decisions late in the game, but most of those decisions were at least consistent with the interpretation the umpire had used through most of the game. There was some inconsistency about what was too high and what wasn't, although a good rule of thumb was that if the player tackled was blonde and wearing black, e.g. Knights, Torney, Hilton, it was too high, and otherwise it wasn't. The umpires were very reluctant to pay holding the ball. There were a number of times when the Dockers were given a very long time to dispose of the ball after they had been tackled.

Final Score : Richmond 13.9-87 lost to Fremantle 12.16-88

© 2000 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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