Since the airline price war between Virgin Blue and Qantas was in full spring, and I had an offer of free accommodation in Sydney, I decided in about February to make a flying visit up to Sydney to watch this game. Of course, about a week after I made that decision JetStar launched their airline with even cheaper airfares, but they don't actually start flying until sometime in May, so they wouldn't have helped.

As seems to happen when my brother and I go to the footy together, it was a wet day. There was steady drizzle in Sydney throughout the morning. Apparently the rain was considerably heavier in the western suburbs, with some flash flooding in some places. Walking to the ground, it seemed that the locals were split about 50-50 as to whether or not it was worth protecting themselves from the rain, so it certainly wasn't heavy.

The pre-show entertainment featured Australian Idol runner-up Shannon Noll doing a variety of cover songs, and generally illustrating his close resemblance to Jimmy Barnes. He even highlighted his resemblance by including Jimmy Barnes' classic Working Class Man, and did his best to win over the local crowd by altering the lyric so that rather than being a working class man, he was a Sydney Swans fan. As far as I can make out, the rain stopped pretty much straight after Shannon did. It was hard to tell, since we had found seats under cover on what I think was called "Yabba's Hill" or something similarly silly.

Following Clive's 100th game last week this was a milestone for another Docker - James Walker.

Fremantle started well, with Longmuir kicking their first two of goals, and they actually had the lead for parts of the first quarter. Sydney dominated the later part of the quarter though, and at quarter time they were 11 points in front. My basic feeling at that stage was that Freo were lucky to be as close as they were.

Sydney dominated the first part of the second quarter too. We were seated near to the goals that Freo were attacking, and we didn't see too much action for a while. The closest thing we had to a highlight was Barry Hall missing a fairly easy chance at the other end. At half time the commentators suggested that Hall's miss could have turned out to be the turning point of the game, as Pavlich kicked the last two goals of the second quarter, and came in only two goals behind at half time. Things started well in the third quarter too, with Clive kicking the first couple of goals to get Freo to within a couple of points.

After that, things went Sydney's way again. I have read some reports that suggest that Fremantle lost it with 20 minutes of poor endeavour either side of three quarter time. I think that sells Sydney's performance during the rest of the game a little bit short, but the fact remains that they did kick seven unanswered goals in the last minutes of the third and the first part of the fourth quarter.

Simmonds drifted forward to kick a couple of goals in the scond half of the last quarter, but by then the horse had well and truly bolted. Some of the Swans fans after the game were keen to describe the game as a thrashing, which suggests to me a certain lack of experience with dishing out thrashings. The TimN Rule: If its not at least a 10 goal margin, its not a thrashing.

As is my wont, I'll have a little whinge about the umpiring. One of my main areas of complaint we're the "you're too tall" free kick that the umpire seemed keen to pay against Sandilands during ruck contests. In fact, the umpires seemed keen to treat the ruck contests in general as an excuse to pay random free kicks. The other one was the propensity of the umpires to permit players, and particularly Barry Hall, to have a red hot go at removing a tackle before they thought about disposing of the ball. On two occasions, Barry spent at least three seconds being tackled before even thinking about getting rid of the ball. On the second of those occasions he actually was penalised, but the first one was just an appalling decision.

All in all though, Sydney were the better side. Fremantle had bursts of good play, but they never got to the stage where I thought they looked like the better side on the day. Sydney was able to attack in waves, and Fremantle weren't able to man up their opponents often enough. The game was summed up in the last quarter when Sydney seemed to have a 6 on 2 advantage on their halfback flank, and still seemed to have a couple fo free men further up the ground. Now I grant you that the game was lost by that stage, but it was still a worry.

Almost all of Fremantle's goals came from their tall forwards, which was good, in that it means that those players were find the ball. On the other hand, it also reflected poorly on Farmer and Medhurst, and the midfield as well, who weren't able to find enough of the ball.

Final Score : Fremantle 10.11-71 lost to Sydney 15.12-102

© 2004 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com

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