The period since Freo were last in Melbourne hasn't gone too well. Chris Connelly got the sack, and/or resigned 4 weeks ago, when it became apparent that Freo wouldn't be able to make the finals this season. Mark harvey took over as coach until the end of the season, and since then, they've won 3 out of 4 games, with the only loss coming against Geelong, who have gone 15 games in a row without a loss. The upshot of that is that Freo came into this game back in with a chance of making the finals. This was billed as a very early Elimination Final, since both teams needed a win in order to remain in contention for the finals this season.

Fremantle got the first goal of the game, to Peter Bell. That was kind of interesting, because Robert Harvey tagged Bell from the start, so Bell went to the full forward line. That paid off to start, with the goal, and Bell set up Cook for another later in the quarter. But Harvey also ran off Bell, and and created some opportunities for St Kilda. Its not a good sign when the oldest player in the league does you for stamina and fitness. Either that, or Bell has just gotten lazy.

Freo wasted a few opportunities in the first quarter. Tarrant missed two gettable shots. Bell should have kicked a goal, but decided to kick it low, which let it be spoilt, and Pavlich hit the post, and then fell just short of a score with the last kick of the quarter. The Saints also wasted a few chances, but I had the feeling that Fremantle were on top for most of the quarter but they didn't get the reward for it.

Freo had two good chances at the start of the second quarter as well, before Gehrig got the first of the quarter, and then St Kilda followed up with two more within a couple of minutes. Freo responded by moving Pavlich into the centre, which at least stopped the flood of goals. Josh Carr missed two in a row that were both gettable, before Farmer took a mark on 50, and then got given a very dodgy 50m penalty and goal. Then the Saints kicked the ball to Farmer and he had his second in a minute or two, and Freo were back within a kick.

And then St Kilda got goals to Milne, Gehrig and Gehrig again, and Freo were all of a sudden not looking good. Bell got one more for Freo before half time, from a slightly dodgy free kick for the traditional Bell throwing the head back when tackled. At half time Freo were 14 points down, but the Dockers had had one more scoring shot and the margin wasn't huge, so there was still some hope.

There was even more reason to hope at the start of the third quarter, when Mundy got the first goal of the 3rd quarter within 30 seconds. ST Kilda then kicked the ext 6 goals, before Pavlich went to the middle again, and got it down to JCarr at fullforward for a goal to Freo.

Freo got one more at the end of the third quarter, and started the fourth with another one, but even so, they were still 5 goals down. Voss got a goal soon after that, and then there were no more scores for a good 5 or 10 minutes. Then the umpires paid a soft free kick againts JCarr, and 50 against him for swearing (which I don't think is in the rules anywhere), and Blake got another goal. After that the Saints got one more and took the lead to 8 goals and the game was over. Freo finished with the last 3 goals of the game, but it was all pretty irrelevant.

Like the game against Essendon at the Dome earlier this season, this game could have been a good one, but wound up being completely ruined by the umpiring. Literally 20 free kicks were paid in the first quarter, and I suppose I should be grateful that the umpires stayed more or less consistent in the sense of paying way too many free kicks, even if their interpretations of the rules changed during the day, and in many cases were just plain wrong. The Channel 10 commentators said that they thought the game had been well-umpired, which just goes to show how much I think the Channel 10 team know about footy.

It would take me pages to list all of the bad decisions, but one that really got to me was in the first quarter, when Gehrig tackled Thornton, grabbed the ball, held it against Thornton's body while Thornton had both arms free, and slammed Thronton into the ground. The free kick for holding the ball was paid to Fraser, and he kicked a goal from it. As already mentioned, the 50m penalty that was paid to Farmer was also a bit dodgy, given that Farmer was definitely looking to go. Ruck taps are always a lottery with the umpires, but there were a couple of occasions where the St Kilda ruckmen were allowed topush the Freo ruckmen to the ground and had free kicks paid to them. The other specific incident that seemed fairly obvious to me was in the last quarter. The umpires called for a ball up, and as the players picked themselves up Shaun MacManus got knocked down three times in a row by Baker. When he was finally allowed up, MacManus went and bumped him back, and had a free kick paid against him. So why did they not pay the free kick to MacManus, who was being slammed into the ground right in front of him, rather that against him after play restarted and he wasn't watching?

A moment of controversy came in the third quarter. St Kilda were attacking, and gave the ball away, so Freo were able to rebound. Unfortunately the only Freo player in their attacking half was Jeffrey Farmer, who for reasons that were unclear at the time had elected to have a lie down at the attacking edge of the centre square. The trainer's came out to him, and he was helped from the ground, with a broken nose, blood on his face and a very dazed look. Interestingly, the blood rule wasn't invoked while he was being taken from the ground. Farmer's opponent Baker was eventually reported for unduly rough play, despite the lack of a report from any of the umpires, and no video evidence. Despite all this, he was found guilty, and got a 7 week suspension. As far as I can tell, the guilty decision came from Baker's own evidence, where he admitted initiating contact with Farmer even though the ball was a good 100m away. The hefty suspension then came from the current system, with the impact of the injury adding some points, and Baker's own bad record just making things even worse.

For most of the game McPharlin played on Riewoldt and kept him pretty quiet. The problem for Freo was that Gehrig kicked his 8, and that was enough. Grover was OK on him, but had a couple of periods off the ground after some big knocks, and didn't really get enough support from his team mates to be able to stop Fraser getting the ball. Certainly, St Kilda looked a lot better in the second quarter while Grover was off the ground and McPharlin had to go back to Gehrig.

Solomon was excellent in the last quarter, with good attack on the ball, and even seeming to take on Gehrig towards the end of the game. Tarrant was quite good early on, but after that his opponent was allowed to werstle him, and he started concentrating on that instead of his oppoent.

Final Score : St Kilda 19.12-126 defeated Fremantle 14.12-96

© 2007 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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