With Sandilands having been injured last week and Longmuir still not right, Fremantle had a whole new ruckman playing in the game. Headland was also a last minute withdrawal, which created room for Troy Cook to play. Even though Freo lost, I don't think either Cook or Warren should be too disappointed with their contributions.

This game started really well for Freo. In the first two centre bounces Warren won the taps, Freo took the ball away and got it quickly into the forward line. Farmer scored the fiorst goal of the game, and Troy Cook came up with the second goal before the 3 minute mark of the quarter. The rest of the first quarter I thought was fairly even. Melbourne added three goals, and had a lead by quarter time, but Freo certainly didn't look out of it.

The story of the game was probably set in the second quarter. Melbourne kicked the first five goals of the quarter, while Fremantle struggled to register a score at all. The first score was a point at the 19 minute mark, and Freo's first goal for the quarter didn't come until the 24 minute mark. At around that time it seemed to me that Fremantle were starting to get back into it, even if they weren't registering the score. And then, just before half time, Parker managed a fumble in the midfield, which left Melbourne free to stream forward and Robertson scored the last goal of the half, and ensure a six goal lead at half time.

There were some other lowlights in the second quarter too. One that the Melbourne fans particularly enjoyed was Johnson running through a forced behind, then coming back out for the quick kick in. He spotted Schammer in teh pocket and so fired off the handball to him. Probably defeats the purpose of a kick in really. Fortunately Freo were able to rush another point from the resulting bounce, so it wasn't as embarrassing as it could have been.

The other second quarter lowlight was Ryan Crowley got cleaned up by Byron Pickett. I didn't really notice it live, and to be honest the replays didn't look like it was too illegal, but the reports are that Crowley has a broken cheekbone, and its hard to see how a legal bump could have broken his cheekbone.

Fremantle rearranged slightly in the second half, with Johnson going forward, and McPharlin going back into defense. That probably counts as a success, as Johnson scored 3 goals in the second half. The backline continued to leak goals, but I don't think McPharlin was particularly a problem there.

Fremantle kicked the first three goals of the third quarter, and four of the first five, to get within 20 points. It was at about that point that I had my biggest frustration with the umpiring, with holding the ball not against Melbourne, and then within about 20 seconds a free kick paid against Duffield for what seemed to me to be exactly the same sort of circumstances. That particular free ended up resulting in a goal to Melbourne, and by three-quarter time they had pretty much steadied to a lead of just over five goals.

Despite the theory that I used to have that Freo needed to be five goals down at 3/4 time to stand a chance, there was no come back to be had today. There's not much to be said about the last quarter. Freo scored the first goal of the quarter, but I was still queueing for the toilet at the time. Sadly that was their only goal for the quarter, so I missed my minimum requirement for an enjoyable game - getting to see at elast one Freo goal each quarter. Melbourne scored 5 goals for the quarter and started resting players with about 10 minutes to go.

At the end of the day, the best that I can say is that Freo's loss wasn't as bad as the result in the other game that was being played this afternoon. Sydney beat Richmond by twice as much as Melbourne beat Freo, so it could have been a whole lot worse, I suppose.

Final Score : Fremantle 8.10-58 lost to Melbourne 17.15-117

© 2006 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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