Collingwood, you will never find  more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Unfortunately a quirk in the AFL fixturing saw Fremantle forced into playing against Collingwood, on their home ground once again, in the early hours of Saturday morning. So they braved themselves and ran out to a crowd of 45,000 people who considered Adam McPhee a bit of a looker and were impressed with the literary skills of Fremantle's highly regarded forward line coach. 

Still, some of the stuff they were yelling over the fence seemed a bit more coherent than parts of their coach's game plan. Earlier in the week, the coach had famously demanded his players be more attacking in their game against Collingwood. So a few of the less nuanced players weren't all that sure why they started the game with a couple of extra blokes back...or 'plus ones' as they hipsters like to say. 

The idea head merit though. The high scoring Magpies were kept goalless for a good ten minutes before the crowd of supporters and a decent number of trained chimps were given something to cheer about. 

Whether the extra men were being of much help was a topic of debate, with the big guns of McPharlin, Johson and Silvagni doing most of the heavy lifting and the latest return of Dylan Roberton looking a lot more like the bloke who used to be talked about being in the company of Nat Fyfe than the spaz who’s been wearing his jumper more recently. They were under unprecedented amounts of pressure as they held back wave after wave of Collingwood attack, only to find that, when they headed forward for some relief, there was a showcase of luxurious MCG turf with the odd splattering of black and white jumper but nothing purplish to be seen. 

A couple more Collingwood goals snuck through, while Fremantle's best effort was a rushed behind from Harry O'Brien (who requested three high fives for his efforts)  and at quarter time the Dockers went in without a goal. 

It was  terrible start by Fremantle, barely looking like scoring and putting their defense under a great deal of stress. On the other hand, their defense had been under a lot of stress and they never looked like scoring...but they were only 18 points off the pace. 

Meanwhile Collingwood were strutting about the place like they were 10 goals up...in a Grand Final, and had all just won dune buggies in the Boys Town lottery. 

Ross Lyon was loving it. He saw their cockiness and knew he could exploit it and turn the tables on his one time arch nemeses. A couple of quick goals and the pressure would be right back on the Magpies, their frustration would turn into panic, they'd start making mistakes and then Ross’s boys would pounce. It was a perfect plan.

Well, it wasn't half bad on paper. Collingwood kicked the opening three goals and Fremantle supporters suddenly had their Saturday afternoon freed up. 

It qas looking ugly. 6 goals to none. Thoughts were drifting to the infamous one goal game against Adelaide a few years back...and those thoughts were of better times. It was hard to see where Freo were going to get their goal from, with the ball not getting any further than the centre and the umpires seeming reluctant to pay  fifty metre penalty, or a free kick. 

Things were so bleak that the City of Cockburn were considering retracting their offer to lure the Dockers away from Fremante, for fear the name Cockburn might become the subject of ridicule. 

But then the clocked ticked over to 12:30 and all of a sudden the Fremantle players woke up. Michael Johnson took a run up from the half back line and flew over a pack of Collingwood players to bring down a screamer at half forward. It caught everyone off guard, giving the Freo players a chance to get into their own forward line for a change, where Johnson found Mayne and sat back as the human laser guided another kick through for a goal. A precious goal. 

The Freo supporters put down their makeshift weapons for a moment and went mad. Their team had kicked a goal, it hadn't rained and the Collingwood supporters were yet to break through their defensive lines and steal their children away - it was shaping up as a pretty decent day at the football in Melbourne. 

As lunch approached and the Freo coach headed out for a sandwich, to beat the half time queues, Fremantle's structure started to fall apart. All of a sudden there were blokes in the forward line, just running about asking for the ball. It was choas.  

Somehow they managed to work their way through the chaos and started to look a chance to score. Zac Clarke looked better than a chance but sprayed an easy kick and Pavlich's managed to hit yet another post but there was still time for some redemption and Zac Clarke managed a belter on the run from sixty or seventy metres out. 

The Freo supporters were Cocka Hoop (the two Fremantle supporters had been give those nicknames at school and they'd stuck). Cocka was impressed with Fremantle's ability to stay in the game, at just 4 goals down while Hoop was heading off to the mobile TAB to see what sort of odds he could get on Fremantle turning their 2 goals to half time into a dozen or so by games end. They were surprisingly long.

There had been a mix up with the Chicken Schnitzel and Ross had been distracted so missed both goals and the first few minutes of the half time break while he argue he should be entitled to a free tartar sauce but once he was down in the rooms he was very much focused on the job at hand, and cleaning the stains off has new woolly tracksuit top. 

The only thing fuller than his tummy was his head, brimming with ideas about how to limit Collingwood from any further scoring and possibly trying to make up the difference by game's end.  

Hoop was concerned he'd done his money early on in the third, as the Magpies peppered the goals with showboating shots at goal and Hollywood antics from the pockets. The Fremantle defenders were awesome though and, despite the odds being well and truly against them, refused to concede a goal. When Greg Broughton kicked Fremantle's third goal for the match, after some very fancy footwork from Pavlich, the defenders were finally able to take a breath. 

Unfortunately breathing was a luxury they couldn't afford and two goals went through for Collingwood, one on the inhale and one on the exhale. 

It was frustrating footy, with Fremantle working very hard to earn every goal, as always, while the opposition seemed to find it easy to string a couple together in quick succession. 

Things were about to change though. The emergency dry cleaners emerged from the changerooms with Pav's superman cape and the Freo skipper flew into action.  He kicked two quick goals, each more brilliant than the last, with his side kick Magic Boots Mundy making a cameo to dob one from the centre square. 

It was a goal fiesta. All of a sudden Fremantle had doubled their score and moved back within three goals of a massive upset. The Dockers looked slick, they were moving the ball fast with a dangerous looking forward line just waiting to kick goals. The defense was as solid as ever and Michael Barlow looked to have re-found the form that saw a group of shady gamblers arrange to have him shot him in the foot with a silver bullet  (at least that’s how it will be told in the tv-movie dramatisation). 

Thing were looking up. It was mounting as the crucial turning point in Fremantle's season, a defining moment that would steel them for September glory...and then Collingwood hit back with two quick goals. 

At the end of the quarter, Fremantle were back where they'd started...plus a few points further back. They'd managed 4 goals for the quarter though, meaning that five goals for the win wasn't an entirely impossible ask, as Hoop found out when he could only get 11-1 at the mobile TAB.

But the bookies knew what they were talking about, with Fremantle looking the business. They opened the last quarter with another goal through Matthew Pavlich and the Collingwood supporters started to worry. 

Briefly. 

Two quick goals back the other way had Fremantle a long way behind with absolutely everything needing to go right. Queue the heavy rain. 

Freo fought on but they couldn't manage to string many goals together, with Collingwood always having an answer. They did manage to kick the 5 goals they needed though, with an extra one for good measure but the Pies kicked 5 of their own and the Dockers went down by 29 points.