This game was played in perfect conditions - about 20 degrees, clear skies, no breeze to speak of and blue skies. Almost made me wish I could move back to Perth.
The first quarter started the way most pundits expected the game to progress, with the Doggies cleaning up Toia at the first bounce. The Dockers had the perfect answer to this, however, as they added the first three goals of the match. With Toia on the bench, waiting for his vision to return, the Dockers were on fire. Spider was winning his ruck knocks, and doing plenty around the ground. Mann opened the game well, marking strongly (yes, Peter Mann and strong marks in the same sentence!) and scoring two goals for the quarter. Some things weren't quite so unusual, fortunately: the Dockers' two points for the quarter came from Wills and Waterhouse.
Waterhouse provided the highlight of the second quarter when he took a big fly, and realised he wasn't going to take the mark. While looking down to judge his landing, the ball snagged in his right arm, and he claimed the mark. Like the first quarter, fortunes see-sawed in this quarter, but Freo were able to kick away a little in the time on period to hold a thirteen point lead at half time.
Midway through the third quarter my flatmate came home, and started distracting me, which is a shame, as the Dockers were doing pretty well at that stage. One highlight that did capture my attention was another Waterhouse highlight, in the final quarter, where he was able to use his soccer skills to hold off an opponent while dribbling the bouncing ball towards goals. Not something you see very day in Aussie rules!
And the Parker update? Shane started on Grant at centre half forward. He didn't exactly stop him, but Grant didn't dominate either. Grant got moved to full forward during the second quarter, so O'Reilly took over the job. Parker seemed to spend the rest of the game taking care of Croft and Hargreaves, though I couldn't tell you which one was his man. Like the rest of the half back line, he had a good first quarter, but he wasn't up to Kickett's standard.
Final Score : Fremantle 15.7-97 defeated Western Bulldogs 13.13-91
timn_from_oz
© 1997 t.neame@trl.telstra.com.au
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