After 18 rounds of 2004, Fremantle had chalked up 11 wins. That left them with four rounds to manage one more win and cement a place in the finals. Three weeks later, at the start of this game, that still hadn't come, and so Fremantle faced the challenge of needing to beat St Kilda at the Docklands, where St Kilda were unbeaten in 12 outings for the season, in order to even stand a chance of making the finals. Even a win wasn't a guarantee of a place in the finals, as Freo were ahead of Essesndon only by percentage at the start of the round, and Essendon were to play Footscray later in the round, with some scope to hand out a belting and radically improve their percentage.

Given Freo's run of three consecutive losses, and bad losses at that, I didn't go along to the game with high hopes of seeing a Freo win. In fact, my prediction before the game was that Fraser Gehrig would comfortably outscore Fremantle, and any contributions from the rest of the Saints would just be icing on the cake.

The first quarter went a lot better than I had expected. ST Kilda scored the first couple of goals, but Freo managed to get back into it.

Early in the fourth quarter Freo managed to get a bit of a rally going, and by about the 20 minute mark of the quarter they had closed to be withing three goals of St Kilda. At that stage the game became a bit of an arm wrestle. St Kilda had plenty of pressure up forward, but every now and then Freo would manage to break free, and look to score on the counter-attack. Unfortunately the attacks seemed to break down fairly predictably when the Freo players would make elementary skill errors in trying to deliver the ball into the forward line.

Oh, and in the end Essendon could only manage to beat Footscray by 17 points, so a win to Freo in this game would have been enough to get us into the finals.

Final Score : Fremantle 12.11-83 lost to St Kilda 17.10-112

© 2004 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

Return to TimN's Home Page