It had been a quiet week in Fremantle. Not through choice though. Mark Harvey was back in town. There was quite a fuss last time he was in town (or getting driven out of town). He was back now, as an Assistant Coach for Brisbane...where coaches go to die...and there was plenty of interest in hearing what the old bloke had to say. Unfortunately the Fremantle suits had slapped a gag order on him, in case his version of events differed from the official version they'd spent the summer editing onto Wikipedia. So, the big story of the week became whether Jack Anthony would get the arse for David Mundy or not. As expected, he got the arse.

There was no gag order on the crowd but you could have easily been convinced there was. After the brilliant victory of Geelong then the debacle in Sydney, even hardened Fremantle supporters were confused about what was going to happen. When Brisbane kicked the opening goal in the opening minute there was a faint murmur but the Cauldron of Fear had become the Cone of Silence as both teams attempted to chip the ball around in their half of the ground with limited success. 

Up the coach’s box, Ross Lyon had decided that his new players were all idiots and had stripped his game plan down to its most basic form - using three whiteboards, a 30 minute video presentation and a 100 page bound action statement. He may have overestimated his players. 

There didn't seem to be much relief coming from the other coaching box with Michael Voss struggling to get anything out of his chief assistant. Mark Harvey was playing it safe with the confidentiality agreement and wasn't giving anything up.

"Who's on Brown, Mark?"

"I couldn't say"

"Who's starting in the middle?"

"Can't tell you"

"Which way to the dunnies?"

"I'll have to run that by my lawyer"

It was like  repeat performance of  Lou Costello’s short lived solo career. 

For all the confusion though, Fremantle seemed to be the most likely side to eventually click and start playing something you could describe as football. They were getting plenty of the footy and much of that footy was ending up in the forward line. Peter Sumich had decided that, in the absence of one great forward, he would just chuck all the part timers down there and let them fight it out for supremacy. He probably wasn't expecting a nil all draw.

Eventually something happened.

Nat Fyfe gave off an exciting handball, which sent blood rushing to Matt Maguire's head ending in Clancee Pearce being given a free kick and a sore back. Pearce opted not to kick it to one of the Fremantle's Next Top Forwards contestants and booted it over everyone's heads, from 80 metres out, for a goal. Fremantle were in front.

Ross Lyon would have been keen to hold onto that one point lead for a long as possible but a young blonde lass from Brisbane kicked a beauty from the pocket and the Lions took the lead back. 

When the quarter time siren sounded, the Fremantle supporters checked their watches. 'Already?' was the general consensus with just the three goals kicked and not much in the way of football being played. For some reason the players were still rooted. Running and such in 25 degrees takes a bit more out of you than sitting and watching people run...although only marginally. 

Against the Swans a week earlier, Ross Lyon had been quick to make some moves and change things around to turn the tables on the Swans, so everyone had high expectations for the second quarter. 

Fremantle supporters are used to disappointment. 

There was plenty of the same when they returned. Lot's of running, not many targets found and plenty of off the ball scragging. Fremantle were doing most of their running with the footy. They did is spectacularly, as far as running with a ball goes. It was just that they were struggling a bit with the kicking and handballing, and were in some strife with their marking. 

15 minutes into the second quarter, something happened again. This time it was Pavlich who was pushed in the back and he followed Pearce's lead and dobbed a goal. Freo’s second goal.  It certainly woke the crowd up...briefly. Most of them rolled back over as soon as the ball went back to the middle and Freo started chipping it around in Brisbane's back half...waiting for the perfect moment to attack. 

Unfortunately Brisbane's back half contains one or two of Fremantle's less than finest and the ball was put out of bounds on the full, in the Brisbane pocket. Polec kicked the goal and Brisbane took a 3 point lead. 

When Nat Fyfe's arm fell off again, and Mellington had used all the sticky tape to keep the gash on his head shut,  people started thinking about heading home. Perhaps stopping off to watch a Tom Hanks movie for something a bit more lively. 

But Ross Lyon had been hatching a plan.  He knew that he needed David Mundy in the side if Freo were to win. And he knew that David Mundy's skin folds tests indicated that he was only good for just over half a game.  So he'd cleverly made sure the game was close until the Mundy window was open. 

Now that it was, he subbed off Fyfe so Fyfe could concentrate on sewing his own arm back on (you can never be too careful getting medical treatment at Fremantle)  and brought the golden bearded champion onto the ground. The crowd sort of went wild but in  sleepy 'look, I know it's Christmas morning but it's 4am on Christmas morning' vibe. 

Mundy wanted to get straight into the game. He'd been out a long time and he wanted to make an impression but more than that, he wanted to kick  quick goal. Michael Barlow had taken 87 seconds to kick a goal after being subbed on. He knew that because Hollywood Barlow had been showing everyone the proofs of the memorabilia he'd created to celebrate the fact. Mundy wanted one in 86 seconds. 

He moved quickly, swooping on a loose ball, navigating a pack of blonde haired, tiny armed Brisbane midfielders before sending the ball forward (that got a huge cheer from the Freo crowd) and before he could brush his golden locks from his face, Clancee Pearce had kicked a goal. 

It was a loss for Mundy though. He tried giving Barlow the 'that was my goal' treatment but no one has ever bought that line.  When he did inevitably kick his goal, it had taken him almost three minutes and he was forced to take himself down to the rooms to give himself the Opus Dei treatment as punishment. 

It might not have met Mundy's own high standards but all the excitement was too much for the crowd to handle so the half time siren was met with some relief. Freo had the lead back, and a few points to spare, which was match winning lead at the current rate of scoring. There was plenty of work to be done by the coaches though...if only Mark Harvey would tell Vossy where the rooms were. 

When the players returned to the ground after the break there was a bit of a buzz. Freo were in front, Mundy, Barlow and Sandilands were starting in the middle, Pav was starting forward and everyone's health fears from the Subiaco food dispensaries had been allayed by the introduction of hair nets for the cashiers. They were expecting things to open up in the second half, lot's of fast breaks through the centre, lots of long kicks into the forward line and mark after mark from the cast of Fremantle Next Top Forward. 

They weren't disappointed when the ball was booted out of the centre and into the arms of Matthew Pavlich. He unloaded from just shy of the goal square and sent the ball sailing through for a goal. Brilliant stuff. 

Well, it was brilliant stuff live.  In case the people at the ground hadn't had enough of blokes fiddling about, they went to the video replay for closer analysis. After the film returned from the Kodak developers it was decided that there was not enough information to make a decision so the goal umpire signalled a goal again. But the field umpire wasn't happy so he overruled the goal umpire anyway, and Pav's goal that had brought an excited crowd to its feet was reduced to a point that brought an angry mob to its feet. 

Za Clarke managed to restore some goodwill to the sport when he defied his size and position to crumb a long kick, sell a couple of dummies to Brisbane types and then snap the goal of the day (as small as the pool may have been).

Fremantle were creeping ahead and their ball movement was looking much more deliberate. Their forward line was still battling with the CCC over use of either of those terms as descriptions but they looked to have the game under control....until the Lions jailed two quick ones, or rather, two relatively quick ones and brought the margin back to 10 points. 

Freo's response was swift, or rather, Freo's response was relatively swift. It was also exciting. Chris Mayne flew over a pack of players. The crowd didn't really respond - then they saw he'd held onto a mark and went mad. He moved the ball on quickly and a precision pass from Pavlich found Mellington in the pocket. The angle was tight but Mellington knows a bit about geometry and footballs and made the impossible look easy, bringing up Freo's 6th goal of the day and giving them a 16 point lead going into the last. 

It didn't feel like the Lions had  chance but they were only three kicks off the lead. After all, Hayden Ballantyne could organise 16 points without the ball returning to the centre. Then again, they’d only kicked 5 for the day and with Jonathan Brown feeling honour bound to marry Luke McPharlin after the attention the Freo defender had been giving him, it was hard to see where 5 more would come from. 

Freo made it even harder for the Lions when Clancee Pearce shook off his leather poisoning and kicked his third goal for the day, in the opening few moments of the last quarter. No one could be bothered mustering up a Freeeee-ooooooo chant but there was plenty of chatter in the crowd as the quarter kicked on, mostly about what was on tv that night, where people were going the next day and, for those who'd been silly enough to eat the fish and chips from a sporting ground, whether or not the poison hotline was a tollfree number.

Paul Duffield snuck forward to put the game in doubt and a few more cracks at goals almost got Fremantle out to double the Lions score but when the final siren eventually sounded Freo had taken the points. The Brisbane players let out a sigh of relief, the Fremantle players were gasping for air and the crowd departed in silence...except for the bloke who was trying to convince everyone that it was a display of tactical genius. He's still carrying on.