Well, my experience of this game began with a farce. Someone in the Western Bulldogs management though that the fans would be willing to pay a premium price for what promised to be a very average game of footy held at a very average location. In the end about 200 of us decided that they were wrong. The most disappointing aspect of this, from my perspective, is that the Doggies have no one else to blame. I had feared that the owner of Optus Oval had forced this upon them, but apparently the decision to supply 2500 tickets at $17.50 and the remainder at $24.50 or more was entirely their own.
But missing the game gave me a better opportunity to assess the MMM radio coverage of the game. With the exception of their call of the game, the broadcast was really quite good - amusing and insightful. My enjoyment would have been even greater had the team spent more of their time actually watching the game and telling us about it. At one stage Douggie Hawkins actually asked one of his co-commentators to repeat a description of a passage of play, as Douggie had missed it.
But what about the game, you ask? Well, two sentences from Nick Place's report in the Sunday Age probably sum up the game. 1) 'Captain Peter Mann went missing again yesterday.' I wasn't aware that they'd found him after the Carlton debacle, but apparently they had. And 2) 'A promising sign for the Dockers was the form of young key-position player Shane Parker.' In fact both Parkers rated a mention in Place's report, so he's clearly a man with his finger on the pulse.
The worst part of not getting into the game was that the Dockers wound up winning, and the game, though apparently not of the highest quality was pretty exciting. I began to wonder about the wisdom of not letting the Bulldogs extort $12 from me when Fremantle had a 21 point lead at the end of the first quarter. By three-quarter time, I was feelin much better, with the Doggies 17 points up and kicking to the goal-scoring end. But I was not counting on the skills of the Fremantle side, most ably demonstrated by Winnie Abraham, who booted the winning goal from at least 60m in the dying seconds of the game.
The wrap-up to the game brought another important milestone for the Fremantle team. Not only did the team win, but they were able to begin the celebrations by leaving the opposition full-forward unconcious on the ground. Thats just the sort of hard edge that has been lacking from their game so far, and if they can learn to do it at the other end of the game, then they'll go a long way in this competition.
Final Score : Western Bulldogs 11.10-76 lost to Fremantle Dockers 10.20-80
timn_from_oz
© 1997 t.neame@trl.telstra.com.au
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