This week the AFL's theme is Indigenous Football. Of course, here in Melbourne, the main focus is on the "Dreamtime" game between Richmond and Essendon, because as everyone in Melbourne knows, Sheeds invented Aboriginal football. The fact that Freo now, and for most of the club's history has more Aboriginal players at the club than any other AFL team shouldn't get in the way of a good story. On the same issue, The Footy Show told me that Chance Bateman was captaining Hawthorn, becoming the first ever Aboriginal captain. Yeah, except for Polly Farmer - and probably a bunch of other guys that I have forgotten as well. What they meant, I think, was that this was the first time an Indigenous player had captained Hawthorn.

Anyway, onto this game. This was a Friday night game played at Subiaco, so at least I got to see it on TV. I had no confidence coming into the game, as mym memory says that Freo don't have a great record on Fridays. Freo dropped Warnock from the team that played last week, leaving Sandilands as Freo's only ruckman. He's good, but that still strikes me as a risk. The other major change was that JCarr was not able to play, having been suspended after an incident last week. Other selection changes were that Clayton Collard got to play his first ever game. Hasleby, Peake and Thornton all returned from injury. Shane Parker got dropped a couple of weeks back, and hasn't been able to make it back into the team.

The game started slowly, with 3 points to each team before the first goal was kicked. After misses to Gehrig, Milne, Pav and Tarrant, Troy Cook - the one bloke you wouldn't back to kick a goal - finally kicked the first one. For most of the rest of the quarter it was almost all one way traffic, and it was one way Freo's way. Freo finished the quarter 5 goals up.

The other bad news for the Saints was the Robert Harvey went down with a bad hamstring strain late in the first quarter. He has been having a very good season, so it was disappointing to see him go. I am sure that it helped Freo's chances in this game though.

St Kilda looked a lot better in the second quarter, and Freo looked a lot less smooth. The two were probably related, but at least part of the for St Kilda fighting back has to go to Freo errors. Fotunately, it didn't cost Freo too much, as Kozitschke kicked a goal early on, but the Saints ended up with 1.7 for the quarter.

Freo's delivery into their forward line wasn't that great either, and the opportunities that did come weren't taken. Tarrant had two shots in a row go out on the full.

I'll slot my whinge about the umpiring in here. St Kilda got 8 free kicks to 1 for Freo in the second quarter, and followed it up with the first 5 free kicks in the third. Some of those kicks were there, and I accept the argument that if you have the ball you are more likely to get the kicks your way, and St Kilda definitely had the ball during this part of the game. Even so, Dodd got absolutely crucified playing on Riewoldt. He only had to breathe on Riewoldt for Riewoldt to get a free kick. That's the new rule interpretation for you, I guess. I did find it amusing though when Dodd started to tire, and Riewoldt got away from him a couple of times, and still couldn't hold his marks. Fortunately, Riewoldt was one of the Saints' worst offenders when it came to not being able to kick straight, so the damage wasn't as bad as it should have been.

The other umpiring highlight was a soccered goal to Tarrant. The ball hit the goal umpire, with Collard vaguely in the area, but somehow the umpires got together, consulted, and decided to rule it as a point. The only person who stopped it crossing the line was the umpire. I don't think Collard touched the ball at all, but if he did, it was only after the ball deflected off the goal umpire.

Freo may also have yet more trouble at the tribunal this week too. Early in the third quarter, Johnson clocked Kozitschke across the head in a marking contest. He got reported for it and it didn't look good. Apparently there is another angle where it is clearer that Johnson was aiming for the ball, so hopefully he will get off, because he was really very good for Fremantle in this game.

Freo score the first 3 goals of the last quarter, and all of a sudden the game was safe. Fremantle started playing kick to kick from about the halfway point of the quarter, which earned them boos from the crowd.

All in all, Freo did enough to win the game, but their opposition were clearly not at full strength, and are still recovering from having ruined football in their boring game against Hawthorn last week. Freo won a good share out of the centre, but still not as much as they should when Sandilands is dominant. Hasleby and Bell were stars, but Pavlich still seemed a bit quiet to me. He did kick 3 goals for the game, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Final Score : Fremantle 15.11-101 beat St Kilda 6.19-55

© 2007 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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