By Seven Hours Behind

"Pressure makes diamonds".
    (General Patton, WWII US General)

There isn't much that beats your team still playing in September. From the amateur country league to the AFL, it's still the same feeling. You sense the atmosphere change around football clubs when finals arrive. Everyone from the finance office to the physiotherapy table walks with an added spring in their step. It can't be avoided. Players - and especially supporters - are caught up in the enthusiasm that comes with possibility. The media and fan numbers swell at open training sessions. Supporters from the member to the casual observer lose focus at work and find themselves subconsciously floating back to the internet to see if the smallest news update might affect the upcoming fixture. Flights and match tickets are frantically purchased with little care for the expenses. After all, who knows when the next time might be. 2006 sure seems a long time ago now.  

Friday night was an excellent performance and one to be be proud of. The margin might have been close but we were good enough for long enough. Watching the game interstate, there was a begrudging nod from the Carlton supporters and other onlookers in the pub with me saying this was a steely showing. Our clearance work deserves particular mention, which has come so far in twelve months. The similarities with 2003 are uncanny. We were tested under lights in Round 22 that year which decided where we would finish. That time it was a decent West Coast team and an epic derby win which meant we secured a home final. That year was also a side of young players with their best ahead of them. Carlton were a stern test and one I think we will be grateful for. Hopefully next week is a different result to 2003. The exciting part now is that anything is possible.

There is a natural order to things and form displayed through the season is generally a good indicator. This year there seemed an even spread. A number of teams displayed a combination of pedigree, depth or the belief that comes with being premiers or close to it in recent years. With the form of several weeks ago, none of us would've been surprised if Geelong, Collingwood, St Kilda, Hawthorn or the Western Bulldogs were on the podium at the end of Grand Final Day. This picture has narrowed somewhat since and there are now two (more than others) with credentials and a worthy claim. Then again, stranger things have happened and all five Victorian teams mentioned above have the key ingredients of a premiership side: (1) several 'game-changers' who can break off their opponents and do something special when a game and season are in the balance; (2) a solid core of 'middle-tier' players (usually 5th-15th in a best and fairest count) who can outplay their opponents of respective or superior ability; and (3) an experienced coach who can use his flexible players to best effect or call on key position players to do something special.

Measured against these indicators, it would be a optimistic supporter to say Fremantle are at the same point just yet. Our list contains three players who would walk into any other finals side's starting 22: Pavlich, Sandilands and (when back to full fitness) probably Barlow. Many are close to this honour at their best - Hill, Tarrant, Ballantyne, Palmer, Mundy and too many others to mention - but as yet they lack the ability to dominate their opponents or dictate terms for large periods in a game. Our middle tier is improving all the time, but by the coaches own admission they need more experience. Harvey himself grows in the eyes of the playing group and supporter base but he is still learning about the list and the coaches box more generally. Some players we all have high hopes for will not be good enough when it counts; others will shine and surprise even themselves. This is always the way. In my opinion, this groups best patch is probably two seasons from now.    

It goes without saying this is not an excuse to accept we aren't the best and quietly exit in the first week. We were a top four team for most of the year before injuries intervened. As this blog has mentioned in other contributions, talk of the 'journey' has brought us unstuck in the past and we can't be sure things will not derail in the peak of the premiership window as they did in 2003-2006. Now is as good a chance as any to see what we're made of, and I'm sure the players are well aware of this. They must remember the old adage that reputations are made in September.

And so there is the question of reputation, or two reputations in particular. Firstly our captain. The debate in the Victorian media moved to another place this year, closer to where journalists in WA and SA have been for some time. There now appears to be widespread recognition that any player selected in the All-Australian Team through his career as a backman, midfielder and forward is not only unique but also a champion. He is a club champion, finishing first or second in the best and fairest for seven consecutive seasons. He is also the very example of the unique and unsentimental AFL draft system: a young kid from West Torrens sent to Western Australia and making a name for himself.

But Pavlich is not yet a champion of September. We can say this is not his fault but the very best make no excuses and he will know what is left to prove. Given the Brownlow medal is now clearly confined to midfielders and statistic accumulators, proving himself in finals is the best and most realistic step he can take to show he is a true champion of his era. This is not to say he has not played well in finals. He has never 'gone missing' so to speak and he made a noble fight of it in the 2006 Preliminary Final against Sydney. But that is what makes finals performances so different: the win and your contribution to it is all that matters.  

There will be many obstacles: he will be double-teamed by two defenders and have others 'block the hole' when leading; he may have one or two young players be overwhelmed by the occasion and perhaps require an arm on the shoulder at a crucial time; he will possibly need to display an act of courage or great ability when the challenge comes from our opponent, something only he can do to make players and supporters believe. If he is playing with injury (as many suspect) then this task is all the harder. But that is what leadership is all about. Or to be more crass about it, that's why he is paid the big bucks. Allow these burdens to overcome him and the question mark will persist. The outline of his reputation will be closer to it's final shape after this finals series. I hope and expect that he will take this chance.

The other player who I believe we can and should expect something special from is Paul Haselby. I must confess I am a stoic supporter of 'Hase', and regard the offer of a one year deal to one of our few 'clubmen' in the club's short history as a poor exercise of judgment. I take the rationale of the club and the age bracket principle on board, but this made the arrival of Adam McPhee on a multiple year deal all the more hypocritical. This is not McPhee's fault. They simply chose a strange time to hold fast to the idea that no player - fan favourite or not - is bigger than the club when building the list for the next premiership assault. The body appears to have given up on him, perhaps validating the clubs decision. So be it.

But class as they say is permanent and I would argue 'Hase' is perhaps the classiest Fremantle midfielder ever. We've had a lot of 'do-ers' down the years, players who got the ball and stayed in the side through sheer will. Think Peter Bell, Troy Cook, Adrian Fletcher or Ben Allan. From even his WAFL days 'Hase' was always something different, the oft-quoted 'footballers brain' with foot skills as well as the ability for the hard ball get. He had the odd weight fluctuation, and good game was sometimes followed by mediocre one, but we have all seen and always known the talent was there. His closest comparisons would be perhaps Jimmy Bartel or Sam Mitchell, and while they would be clearly regarded above him now there is nothing to say the reputation gap can't narrow with one last great performance.

The knee reconstruction undoubtedly came at an awful time. But in his own words he took that year to recover, attended the Beijing Olympics where he saw talented people with such small windows of opportunity to succeed and realised the true gift he had been given to be an elite athlete. And make no mistake, what 'Hase' has is a gift. Since 2008 we have seen a player who knew he was closer to the end than the beginning. He may have had bouts of inconsistency but there is a great player in there with perhaps only one 'big game' chance left to prove it. Like Pavlich I also hope he takes his chance and leaves on a high note.

In many respects these two players symbolise a lot about our club. They were the centrepiece of our attempt to build a finals list a decade ago after we received priority picks at the clubs beginning, failed in the early years and had to go back to the bottom to get them again. Almost every draft scout's fist would have hit the table when we took them in 1999. Make no mistake they were wanted players. It was a deep draft with names such as Joel Corey, Robert Murphy, Cameron Ling, Leon Davis and Paul Chapman taken after. Would our two choices have been better players or bigger stars had they gone to other clubs? It's a hypothetical about as helpful as asking if Andrew Macleod would have played 340 AFL games at Fremantle had Gerard Neesham not disliked his earring. We simply will never know.

But they are the last players left who've played through the highs and lows of the 2000's. One could say it was a decade which started with Damian Drum's cruel media circus at the Duxton Hotel in 2001 and ended with a one goal performance at Football Park in Adelaide last year. While unfair to focus symbolically on these moments - and not our first finals appearances - it was not without gross disappointment and we should expect (and must demand) more from the coming ten years. As players Pavlich and Haselby reflect the Fremantle teams they've played in: great potential and worthy of merit, but unable to summon the luck or consistency to be considered truly the best. Luckily for them (and us) last drinks haven't been called. A new chapter awaits.  The captain and favourite son mightn't play a role in all of it through the coming decade but they can make an imprint to show us all the often frustrating 2000's are over and that something better is beginning.

They have a group of young and promising players around them who look to them for inspiration and to help navigate the lessons they have learned from a decade at the top level. It has been a great and surprising season but a meek finals exit will put it all in perspective. The time to perform is now. If there is one thought Pavlich and Haselby should offer to the cadre of the future it would be this: a career of 200-plus regular season AFL games is a rare and credible achievement, but September is when you can erase a good reputation and replace it with a great one.