By losing to Melbourne, at the MCG in Round 22 Fremantle were able to do themselves out of their first ever finals spot. To be fair, the team Fremantle team in that game had been pretty heavily hit by injury. On the other hand, Melbourne didn't exactly have a good run with injury in 1997. This clash gave everyone their first chance to see how a full-strength Melbourne under new coach Neale Daniher stood up against a (more or less) full-strength Dockers team.
The Dockers named O'Reilly and Mann in their squad, but both were last minute withdrawals, and Dale Kickett wound up acting as captain for the day. O'Reilly was missed, particularly in the opening quarter, when the Melbourne forwards really did trouble the Dockers with their marking strength; Mann wasn't, with Clive Waterhouse more than filling his shoes at centre half forward. And in a proud day for lovers of fine football everywhere, both Parkers started the game, with Shane finally overcoming a tricky groin in time to line up for the first real game of the season.
Melbourne debuted Jeff White, who was booed by the Dockers faithful every time he did anything. Unfortunately for Jeff, mostly what he did was run back to the bench, as Jim Stynes demonstrated how far a little bit of experience can get you. The channel 7 commentary team made one of their more galring errors with regard to Jeff White, stating that he was "probably the first player to have actually left the Dockers". Clearly they didn't watch Chris Groom and Peter Bell playing earlier in the weekend. Their other great achievement was to tell us repeatedly that Trent Carroll had been called up to make his debut in this game.
Melbourne started well. Fremantle scored first, with a goal to Waterhouse, but after that the first quarter was pretty much all Melbourne. That trend continued until the time-on period of the second quarter, when it seems that Freo suddenly realised that they could lose this game if they didn't extract the digit, and they piled on about 4 goals to go into half time slightly ahead. The second half was pretty much all Fremantle, with plenty of good drive coming from across the half back line. Melbourne looked tired and Fremantle didn't. The final quarter was highlighted by some speccies from Shaun Smith, and a few goals to Melbourne made their score look a little more repectable.
As it was a round of close results, this win was enough to boost Freo into third place on the ladder (after one game, sure, but still ...). That position is unlikely to last though, with Adelaide in Adelaide, followed by West Coast, then Essendon in Melbourne as Freo's next three games.
Final Score : Fremantle 13.6-84 defeated Melbourne 8.13-61
timnfromoz
© 1998 timnfromoz@hotmail.com
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