This game was played over in Perth, so there was no opportunity for me to get to the ground to see it live. Even worse, it wasn't telecast on free-to-air TV into Melbourne. Since I didn't have anything else to do, I decided to head into the Crown Casino and watch the game on the big screen in the Sports Bar there.

The talking point of the game came in the second quarter when Fevola got into a wrestle with Grover. Grover won the wrestle, but then came off blood on his face just under his eye. It wasn't until they showed me the replays, that I was able to spot Fev rubbing his hand around on Super's face, trying to get an eye gouge in. Fev also gave away a 50m penalty, and Pagan dragged him for that.

From my memory that incident was the turning point of the quarter and probably of the game. Fremantle kicked six unanswered goals at the end of the second quarter, and led by 4 goals at half-time. Carlton made strong challenges in the first half of the third quarter and the mid-part of the final quarter, but they weren't ever able to close the gap.

Fremantle certainly looked a lot better than they did last week, but I still wasn't 100% convinced. Carlton ended up with more scoring shots than Freo did, and it was really their inability to put a big score on the board during the parts of the game when they were dominating that cost them the game in my opinion. The movement of the ball out of defense was at least a lot more direct, but there were still quite a few skill errors in the disposals that I noticed. And whether it was Carlton fighting back or Freo letting them off the hook, but Freo didn't really bury the Blues in the last quarter, and the game wasn't a sure thing even with 5 minutes to go.

Medhurst kicked 4 goals, and got much better reward for having a good game this week than he did last week. Farmer I think only ended up with one, but deserved more, because he was absolutely crucified by the umpires. Actually thats not quite fair, the umpires just managed to pay free kicks that weren't there against him, while at the same time not paying the kicks that were there. It was very bizarre.

Pavlich was listed as the star of the show in most of the press. I thought he was pretty good, but he didn't have as much impact on the scoreboard as he could have, and to be honest I didn't notice him getting the ball as often as the stats say he did. Parker also got singled out for praise, on the grounds that Fevola didn't see much of the ball. To be honest, I didn't think he was much better than he was last week, its just that this week he played on an out of form player, who didn't have great delivery from his midfield.

Final Score : Fremantle 15.13-103 beat Carlton 11.18-84

© 2005 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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