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“F–king Freo!”
Of all the Robert Walls tributes after his passing, the most amusing was broadcasting teammate Gerard Healy revealing the standard Walls text message whenever Fremantle lost a game they really should have won over the last 25 years.
On Sunday at 6pm, messages like “f–king Freo” bounced around the nation’s footy group chats again. Unlike Wallsy’s texts, these were in wonderment and admiration.
30 years into their AFL existence, the Dockers’ win over Collingwood felt as substantial as anything they have achieved before.
It may also cause those on the east coast to revise their Freo-phobia.
A top-placed Magpies, a big partisan away crowd (62,198 is the largest home and away crowd the Dockers have ever played in front of) and a, shall we say, uneven umpiring performance had the odds stacked against purple.
Multiple times, the big brother Pies looked to have swatted away the annoying little brother throughout the day. Post-game best afield Caleb Serong admitted they had been on the ropes for three quarters. When Collingwood kicked away to a 22-point lead in the last quarter, it appeared to have been a knockout.
Yet their knees remained study.
Jordan Clark, one of those mid-tier Dockers who has risen to another level over the past few months, summed it up post-game with Channel Seven.
“At times in the past we would have folded,” he told Erin Phillips.
The Collingwood win was the culmination of nine weeks of the Dockers producing valuable, but often unpretty, wins. They are 8-1 since the middle of May, knocking over three top-eight teams on the road (Collingwood, GWS and Gold Coast), while their one loss was by 11 points against a resurgent Sydney at the SCG.
They are the inverse Western Bulldogs. They grind out wins against the bottom part of the ladder as opposed to Harem Globetrotters exhibitions – the difference is they can replicate it against the top teams.
Whether TV and radio analysts or The Roar page commenters, eastern states folk have resisted Freo all season.
Whether it be Justin Longmuir’s coaching, the Sean Darcy-Luke Jackson tandem ruck strategy, or the club’s historical flimsiness, we have all found a reason to eliminate Fremantle from our thinking.
In the meantime, they have put their heads down, bums up, and earned their stripes off-Broadway.
This Collingwood win feels like something momentous for the Dockers. The club’s greatest win remains their qualifying final upset of Geelong in 2013 that vaulted them into their one and only Grand Final, but this would have to be their greatest home-and-away triumph.
Objectively, the team that ran out for the Dockers on Sunday seems much more balanced and deeper than even that 2013 high mark.
A midfield highlighted by the consistently bankable talents of Serong and Andrew Brayshaw, and a stingy defence led by the soon-to-be-returning Alex Pearce, the rebound of Clark, the intercepting of Luke Ryan and the lockdown of Brennan Cox, is a solid base.
A six-goal breakout performance from Patrick Voss highlights the various avenues to goal in the Dockers’ forward line. In Jye Amiss and Josh Treacy, they have athletic key talls, but add a third in Voss and then the varied talents of Shai Bolton, Michael Frederick, Sam Switkowski and Murphy Reid, and in full flight the task for opposition defenders is akin to whack-a-mole.
Then there’s Jackson, who kicked the goal that mattered most on Sunday, and may be rucking, playing as a mid or as a forward, depending on the day and the opposition.
Don’t forget that Jackson has already helped changed the course of a Grand Final in his short career.
The Dockers have capability and adaptability. The biggest question mark heading into September is whether they have left this run too late. Sitting equal-fourth on wins, their percentage leaves them straggling back in seventh. As dangerous as they are, they desperately need to move at lest two paces up the ladder to launch a genuine premiership challenge.
Sunday’s win, though, means they hold their own destiny.
Their toughest games in the run home will be the Bulldogs away and Brisbane at home. If they lose both, they are back in the pack fighting for spot in the lower reaches of the eight.
But when you have beaten Collingwood at the MCG, you should run out with the confidence to win both.
Would the old Dockers have done that? Probably not. They also would not have beaten Collingwood in the first place.
Do that, and the top four is possible; then the Dockers can start dreaming of Flagmantle.
Like the Lions last year, and in their famous 2001 flag-winning season, sometimes slow starts mask premiership credentials until it is too late for anyone to halt the momentum of inner belief.
F–king Freo, who ironically, Walls’ son David help build this incarnation of as head of player personnel, might be quietly turning into Fabulous Freo.