We're back, baby! Fremantle shook off the humiliation of losing a game to West Coast earlier and the year and handed out an old fashioned derby chumpification. In classic derby style, Fremantle carve up the Eagles rebounding through the centre of the ground and embarrassed their "defenders" with a host of goal kickers - with humiliation their only real goal. Matthew Pavlich lead the charge, going berserk at full forward with 8 goals and a highlights reel of specky marks while .Hayden Ballantyne kicked a lazy 3, Jon Griffin carved up the highly touted Eagles’ ruck combination and Luke McPharlin even got comfortable enough to start taking hangers again. The win hasn’t quite got Freo in the 8 yet but the Dockers will head back to Fremantle to celebrate with their supporters while West Coast are expected to trot out a list of injuries while their supporters call the game Fremantle's grand final and then change the subject to the Olympics.

The derby had arrived at a bad time in the season for Fremantle. Coming off a month where they'd played and beaten the worst of the worst, they were ready for a challenge. Like tigers who'd been trapped in a cage for a month...well not tigers, they would have just taken sleeping tablets to pass the time then "shown up late to training". Like demons waiting at the gates of hell...well not like demons, they'd deliberately lay down and call it “experimenting with players in different positions”.  Like Eagles...lets not even go there. 

The point was that they were geed up and ready for a fair dinkum contest to get themselves ready for the heat of finals footy. Unfortunately all they had to work with was a game against the West Coast - a derby, as the West Coast types liked to call it - or 'a light training run' if you hailed from Fremantle way. 

But, as Fremantle have often lamented when they've been forced to fly from Tasmania to Queensland and then follow up with a ‘short’ trip to Adelaide, there's not much you can do about the fixtures. So they put their finals preparation on hold for another week and set about going through some of the basics to keep themselves in good nick for the upcoming game against Adelaide. 

The crowd were excited early - there was a free kick to Hayden Ballantyne when Beau Waters put 50 cents into the back of Hayden and rode him like a shopping centre toy car.  This being little more than a training run, The Mayor didn't see the point in kicking a goal from an easy free kick so he nudged the ball to the left so it could be brought back into play. 

It proved a very productive judgement by Ballantyne and the ball was booted up the ground where the Fremantle midfielders went to work. Mundy, to Barlow, to Pavlich and through the goals. There was barely a goose to be seen as Fremantle put on a mini clinic.  ...Read More