My parents were in town oiver the weekend, so I took them along to the game. My Mum tells me that they had never previously seen Fremantle win in a game that they were at, so they were hopeful of a good result this time.

At the ticket office we were offered front row seats, at the same price as general admission, and naturally we took them. These seats wound up being just behind the point post at the southern end of the ground. Since it was a sunny day, the roof was open, so this meant we were looking right into the sun. It was conceptually cool, but we ended up moving up the third tier, but the middle of the ground, at half time.

The first half was basically pretty uninspiring. Fremantle managed to build up a lead of about 20 points by half time, but both teams wasted quite a few chances.

Freo pretty much sorted out the game in the third quarter, when they added 6 goals to Carlton's 2. Murphy kicked 3 for the quarter.

The less said about the last quarter the better, really. Freo had a 45+ point lead in the last quarter, but Carlton scored the last five goals of the game, to leave Freo with a 3 goal win, instead of a percentage-booster. Because of the other results during the weekend, it looks like that percentage may not matter, as this win left Freo in 8th place, two games clear of Geelong in 9th.

McPharlin played in defense again, and I thought he was pretty reasonable, but Fevola kicked 5 on him, so it wasn't exactly a game-winning performance. On the other hand, he certainly wasn't missed in the forward line, with Murphy kicking 5 in the spot that McPharlin has pretty much held him out of for most of the season. Longmuir was a last minute withdrawal, so Medhurst got a game, but didn't do much. His lowlight was in the second quarter when Pavlich marked just outside 50, and passed across to Medhurst who was well within range. Medhurst decided to be unselfish and managed to cough up the ball instead.

Pavlich was OK. He kicked two goals, and set up a couple of others, but I wondered if he might have been carrying a slight injury. There were a couple of incidents where he didn't really seem to strain himself in his efforts to get to the ball. One was a kick that was just a bit too high, so maybe his lack of effort there was sending a message to the midfield who had failed to deliver to him.

Final Score : Fremantle 15.17-107 beat Carlton 13.11-89

© 2006 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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