Two years ago, after being forced into a tactical retreat at the loss of Aaron Sandilands, Des Headland and half the backline, Matthew Pavlich lead his team off of the MCG with their finals hopes torn to shreds. But like General MacArthur, Pavlich swore then and there that he would return. 

Many just put that down to Pavlich spending his summer working on his terrible forehand down at the Fremantle Tennis Club but, true to his word (although he’s still crap at tennis)  Pavlich did return, singlehandedly dragging his team up from the zombie land they call 12th-9th spot on the ladder and into 7th place, where they would once again be matched against Geelong at the MCG...but this time they were fit, ready and less stringent about abiding by the Geneva convention. 

Geelong, for their part, had seen this day coming. For all the premierships, Brownlow medals and Abletts that they'd won and lost in the past few years, they still knew that Fremantle had their measure. Their greatest fear was to meet a fit and firing Fremantle side in September, to the point where those fears got the better of some of their senior players when the two sides last met, throwing punches and dropping knees into the smallest and youngest of the Freo players.  Like Bobby Davis used to tell his boys when he took the Cats on the road - 'kill anyone who'll ever grow up to wear a pair of footy boots'.

So no one was surprised wen Geelong came out swinging at the opening siren...err scoreboard countdown thingy. They wrestled the ball out of the centre and went long to the forward line where Tom Hawkins fancied his chances against Zac Dawson.

But Zac had a trick up his sleeve. He spoiled the footy, then  he ran after it and kicked it back the other way. No one had seen that kick coming. It was like Rocky switching back to his left hand. Geelong were in shock. Freo ran the ball down the ground and put it in the hands of Matthew Pavlich. 

Pav had obviously spent most of his week teaching Dawson to kick instead of practicing his own kicking and sprayed it three towns over but the ball came straight back and Micheal Walters set his skipper up a bit closer the next time around, which Pavlich had no trouble converting into the first goal of the game. 

It was a great start from Fremantle and it was great boost to their confidence against a quality, finals hardened premiership contender...at least that's what it had said in the brochure. It soon became apparent that Fremantle were a couple of classes above the Cats. Dominating in the middle, Fremantle found themselves doing little more than shelling peas as Pavlich and Ballantyne ran amok up forward to put Fremantle 3 goals up. The planned purple invasion had suddenly become a victory march.

They were winning all over the ground, out Geelonging Geelong with a combination of heavy hitting, fast running, unmoveable defense and a forward line that was more of a queue than a line.

Ryan Crowley, unsure whether he should bother to continue tagging anyone found himself wandering forward and  bringing the Fremantle supporters to their feet - jumping up and down and carrying on like lunatics. 

It was a complete pantsing, with Fremantle's ability to run and score only outmatched by Geelong's inability to play anything that resembled one of the major codes of football. When Pav put through his third for the quarter to put Fremantle up by 36 points, there were AFL officials discussing deregistration as the once proud Geelong Football Club disintegrated into a laughing stock. 

When the quarter time siren sounded, the Freo supporters who'd travelled east were already on their 5th lap of the Mexican wave. The Geelong players weren't doing too bad with their own version of the wave - pointing at each other and shouting abuse. They were falling apart. 

Ross Lyon kept a cool head though. He explained to the players about not getting ahead of themselves...or you'll end up drawing and then choking the next week...and then he trailed off into some sort of rant about Stephen Milne. 

So Fremantle returned for the second quarter ready to pick up where they'd left off...total humiliation of the reigning premiers. It wasn't as hard as it sounded. There was no doubt that Geelong were a formidable opponent, just not formidable for Fremantle.  They continued to own the centre square with the combination of Sandilands and Barlow proving a clearance winning machine. The Geelong supporters were convinced that having a bloke that tall and a bloke that good, boht who appear to cut their own hair, was some form of cheating. 

But it was a bloke who has a team of stylists working around the clock on his hair, Matt de Boer, who got the scoring started again, when David Mundy lured half the Geelong defence into the pocket and then spotted up Dead Eye de Boer straight in front. The wave started up again and even the most arrogant of the Geelong supporters started to check the Terms and Conditions of the plane tickets they'd bought to Adelaide to see what the refundability status was.

Chris Scott didn't have any answers. He tried ringing his brother for advice but all he got was a series of profanities and something about getting rolled by 10 goals. The Cats did manage to get a couple more points to peg the margin back to 42 but Clancee Pearce slotted one through from fifty odd out to push Fremantle out to an even more humiliating lead. 

But it was in that moment of despair that Chris Scott finally thought of something. He sent the runner out to Joel Selwood and then around to some of his teammates and all of a sudden the Cats struck gold - they ducked, ducked a bit more and then, just for good measure, they did a bit of ducking. 

Perhaps they were slow to catch on or maybe they just felt sorry for Geelong but the umpires were completely sucked in by it all. They were dishing out free kicks all around the ground but mostly in front of goals. Geelong finally got their first major, 20 minutes into the second quarter. They got two more after that as Fremantle players tried desperately not to tackle anywhere above the ankles. 

The Geelong crowd were doing backflips over their teams performance, three goals in as many minutes. Sensational stuff. That is until they looked up at the scoreboard and realised that for all their hard work and ducking they were still getting smashed. When Michael Walters wandered up to a loose footy, dropped his boot into it and soccered it through the legs of all 6 Geelong defenders before getting it to sit up and bounce into the football esky, their hearts sunk and their spirits broke. 

Ross Lyon was concerned though. His side was 6 goals up at half time in a final, if Geelong had given up they would have started their traditional halftime brawl to try and take as many players down with them as they could. But there was no fighting, they just trudged off with their heads down. They still thought they were in this game. 

He was spot on too. When Geelong returned from their half time rethink, they returned a different team. They returned the good team. They had two goals on the board in the opening few minutes and crept within 20 points of Fremantle. All of a sudden Fremantle had lost control of the game, they were no longer a man up at every contest and two men up at each loose ball. The Cats were back. 

Luckily it was just the challenge Fremantle had been waiting for. They were in this finals business for easy wins and soft premierships, they wanted someone to push back. 

So Fremantle stepped up and a quick clearance from the middle had the ball back in the hands of Matthew Pavlich who fired a warning shot across Geelong's bow by drilling his 4th. 

The Cats stepped up the pressure as they desperately tried to make up another 5 goals to get back in the game but wave after wave of Geelong attack was repelled by the Freo defenders, keeping the Cats out like Nik Naitanui keeps reality at bay. Vardy got another goal for Geelong but just as they thought they might be a chance to wear Fremantle down, the Dockers struck back.

First Pavlich threaded one through from the pocket, then Ballantyne dobbed one from fifty. Had Pavlich mouthed off after his goal you would have had suspicions of some sort of Freaky Friday switched bodies action. When Michael Walters unleashed his skills from the middle and took Fremantle to a 39 point lead, the Freo crowd went into song. Some went into convulsions and started speaking in tongues. 

By three quarter time it was all done and dusted but Ross Lyon is a sporting sort of a bloke. Geelong have a rich history and a proud record in recent years so he knew it was important to show some respect in the last quarter, not resting players for next week or putting Zac Dawson in the forward line. 

He put on a bit of a show for the Geelong supporters, giving his players a bit of a spray as if he was still concerned about the game, then he gave a bit of a wink and a nudge and sent them out to give the Cats something to take home. 

So Geelong ran themselves silly in the last quarter trying to double their total score in the last quarter. Everyone knew it was futile and when Matthew Scarlett put together a makeshift gang and went hunting Hayden Ballantyne, Geelong had realised it too. 

Fremantle cruised home for a 16 point and will be back home  couple of days before heading to South Australia to settle another old score, the Crows at Footy Park.