There had been a lot of talk around Fremantle about Ross Lyon's game plan in the lead up to the Derby. Was it too boring? Was it too ugly? Was it just generally crap? The town was divided...as usual. But it was all irrelevant. It was derby week. It didn't matter how Ross Lyon coached. He could win pretty, win ugly, win with tea cosy on his head and a fish down his pants. He just had to bloody win. There are no articles of war in a derby.  You do what you have to do to get the 4 points and then worry about the fall out later. History will judge you kindly. 

Of course, if you lose you won't be so lucky. Mark Harvey lost both derbies last year. Ask him what happens to you when you do that...if you can find him. He was last seen somewhere in Brisbane, carrying the drinks. 

So when the thirty fifth derby got going in Subiaco, there were a lot of very happy people back in Fremantle. It looked like Ross had had some sort of pre-derby epiphany, a Derpiphany. 

 He stacked the forward line with talls, the midfielders looked to have a license to run and create and the defense was choc full of defenders...and Zac Dawson. 

They still kept Ross's tight defensive mindset, they'd just added a dash of attacking flair that makes Fremantle Fremantle.  Unfortunately they'd grown a bit rusty on the whole attacking department. It had been a while. So there were a few dropped marks, a few misdirected kicks inside fifty and a few decisions to pass the ball instead of selling a dummy, having a couple of bounces and blowing everyone's freaking mind. 

They kept it together pretty tight though. The Eagles were struggling to get the ball much past the centre line and their supporters were already thinking about heading home early to beat the traffic. 

Of course, it was till a derby and, despite having most of the footy,  Fremantle were still dealt the traditional derby umpiring. A new derby rule had been introduced though. If you really, really obviously duck into a tackle they won't pay a kick for too high...but you can hold onto the footy for 6 or 7 minutes before they'll consider paying holding the ball. 

The Freo boys would have gone in expecting that sort of behaviour so they carried on regardless. They carried on when Zac Clarke was indecently assaulted, the carried on when Aaron Sandiands became a kids supermarket ride, they carried on when Daniel Kerr assaulted Ryan Crowley then complained to the umpire.

Kerr even went as far as running to the bench and asking to be bandaged up to make it look like it was Crowley who'd been throwing the punches. 

It took a fair while but eventually the Dockers scored. By golly it was worth the wait. Pav was being held at half forward but still managed to get a hand on the footy and tap it past the three Eagles who were waiting patently in line till their turn to hold Pav came around. While they were distracted by an argument about 'no cutsies', Hayden Ballantyne took the opportunity to swoop in and grab the footy without anyone grabbing their head and falling to the ground. He got it, he ran with it and then he booted it. It sailed through for goal and the ground went silent...but for the sound of knitting needles and the adjusting of Naitanui wigs. 

The first goal is often the hardest but with the first one on the board there was sure to be an opening up of the game and a few late ones belted through. Unfortunately Ross Lyon seemed pretty keen to defend the one goal lead, while the Eagles are just crabs. When the quarter time siren sounded the Dockers were up by 3 points with the Eagles once again having a goalless Derby quarter. 

Aside from an awkward moment when Suma went to the wrong huddle (not because he was confused by his change of teams, he'd seen the Fremantle president and headed in that direction) everything was pretty calm at the break. Fremantle had done what they'd set out to do - stopped the Eagles from scoring - and with a bit more practice at the whole 'attacking' thing, they were sure to push the lead out by half time.

Fremantle stepped their awesomeness up to a solid 8 to start the second quarter. Pavlich picked up the ball somewhere in Jolimont and headed east. He ran through the West Coast press, had a bounce when he arrived at centre half back, dished off a handball to Mayne on the wing, kept running, got the ball back from Mayne, had another bounce, gave it to Mayne again - who decided to depart from the script and handed the ball to Zac Clarke who drilled the goal. 

Pav was majestic as he ran around in his superman cape racking up kicks and humiliating the ducks. As always the problem was there was only one Pav, so a lot of his work wasn't capitalised when he booted it forward to where Glass was raping Griffin. The signs were all positive though.

But Ross Lyon made  tactical error when he handed Zac Dawson a plastic water bottle and told him to go pick up Glass, which caused the former Men's Health model some confusion and a stunning bit of work from Stephen Hill in the middle turned into a bit of debacle when the Eagles ran the ball down the ground and Priddis managed to fluke a goal. 

Their first goal of the game and it had come halfway through the second quarter...no wonder they were all so excited. The yellow and blue idiots cheered as if they'd won a flag...an honest flag. The ducks lifted with the crowd and came at Freo hard, relatively speaking, but the Fremantle defense was rock slid. Luke McPharlin continued his long standing tradition of being better than everyone, Michael Johnson was flying about the place taking marks at will and sending the ball back down the ground with laser guided precision, Alex Silvagni was a bit rough around the edges after a long spell on the sidelines but getting the job done and Zac Dawson was up the other end of the ground. 

The Eagles just couldn't break through. So, after toying with them for a while, and watching their 'press' turn into a gaggle they decided it was time for some more scoring. Stephen Hill got the ball out of the middle of a pack and did his Millennium Falcon out of the exploding Deathstar routine. He flew out the middle, put his head down and went for a run. When he looked up he got a bit of a shock. Chris Mayne was standing around in a paddock with no one in sight. Hill chipped the ball out in front of him and Mayne cruised in for another Freo goal. Easy pickings. 

But at 8 points up, Ross sent the word out to defend the lead so Fremantle went back on the back foot. Their three talls were proving very handy as they took grabs about the half back line but with a stopper put in the Freo goals the ball kept coming back. 

After several attempts, half a dozen dummy spits and quite a few infringements that went unseen by the umpires, Nik Naitanui finally took a mark. It happened to be in the forward line and his kick wasn't too difficult. It went through and the two sides went into the break on 20 points each. 

Aside from proving the theory that scoring at the football in inversely related to the price of the beer, the score was a badge of honour for Ross Lyon. He'd controlled the first half of the game and, although he wouldn't have cared, history has shown that the Eagles will usually go too hard in the opening half of a derby and not have anything left after half time. 

So everyone had their sports cordial and sandwiches (well the ones who got to the sandwiches before Spider Burton polished them all off) and headed back out for  traditional Fremantle second half domination of the derby. 

Bugger.  Fremantle had Eagled themselves. 

They'd spent so much energy stopping the Eagles from scoring in the first half without building a lead that the whole thing fell apart in the third quarter. The Fremantle defenders were under siege from the opening bounce. Even with the ridiculous incompetence of the West Coast forwards when they see two posts, the Freo defense had no chance. Every time they got rid of the ball it would come straight back at them. It was like trying to get rid of an Indian telemarketer. 

Eventually Schofield kicked one, then Hill, then Darling...which at least gave Silvagni some respite when he finally got a chance to use his “Nice goal, Darling” jokes. They kept coming and Fremantle kept falling further behind, their midfielders reverting to the “kick it long! - 'Who to?” school of football as they desperately belted the ball forward in the hope that there would be a free Fremantle player somewhere on the ground. 

By three quarter time the damage wasn't pretty. No goals for the quarter, six goals behind and three goals on the board for the afternoon. It was certainly going to be a classic derby win if they could get up.

They couldn't.

There was more of the same in the last quarter with just a couple of hard fought goals salvaging Fremantle's pants.