Match Preview: Fremantle v Pt Adelaide
by Shane Richmond 29-03-2007

It's been a quiet summer down at Fremantle. Players have been working hard, focusing on lost chances from 2006 & their goals for 2007, hitting the gym, bonding with each other, listening to their coach and, most importantly, avoiding developing hard core drug addictions which could see them thrown out of the game. Yes, a very successful pre-season is just a short wait away from being a ripper of a year.


Unfortunately, at some point in every season, Adelaide teams have to get involved. As if the WA Police haven't got enough on their plate at the moment with the antics of the mob up the road, the AFL have gone and endangered public safety once again by fixturing Port Adelaide to play Fremantle. In Port's case, it's not because they are a menace to society trying to corrupt everything that is good and wholesome in this world with their funboy behavior, it's because every man, woman and child that wasn't inbred in Port Adelaide would like to hit them over the head with a whiskey bottle.

If you've just arrived in Australia after spending the past decade in a coma in central Africa and you don't quite know why Port Adelaide are so despised, you only need to glance through this week’s newspapers to see why.

Without a ball even kicked in anger for the 2007 season, they're all ready doing their best to be the league leaders in obnoxious throwbacks, with their entire leadership group queuing up to take pot shots at poor unsuspecting Fremantle from behind the skirt tails of Michelangelo Rucci all the way back in Adelaide.


Despite not even being able to drag himself onto the ground, Port skipper Warren Tredrea went to town on Fremantle early in the week. Calling them chokers, inferring they were soft and somehow deluding himself that Port Adelaide were a team to be feared.

Chad Cornes has opened his ugly mouth to give us a look into the cavernous insides of his head, telling locals that Matthew Pavlich is Fremantle's only forward and unveiling his plan to wipe the floor with Pav and keep the Dockers scoreless.

Even Dom Cassisi is slipping in the rabbit punches, calling the Dockers slow and having the hide to suggest Brendon Lade is more than a match for Aaron Sandilands. When the big Docker heard that on the news he nearly ate the 108cm plasma he was watching in a fit of rage. If he hadn't just bought the box set of McLeod's Daughters he’d be down at Rick hart shopping for a new tv this weekend instead of making a goose out of Lade.

When told of the comments, Chris Connolly's response was to ask 'Port who?'. When someone jogged their memory by reminding them they were the team who self destructed a few days after winning their first flag (not to be confused with the team currently self destructing after their third) he laughed it off and pointed to Pav taking a screamer over the back of Chris Tarrant and Paul Hasleby running laps with a Yoda like Peter Bell on his back shouting instructions.

For the Dockers, Port Adelaide are just some fruity coloured witches hats they'll be running around this weekend while they use the opening round as an opportunity to send a message to the rest of the competition. That message is - be afraid.

Fremantle tore the competition apart in the second half of last year. Every time they were told they couldn't, they did. Had it not been for budget cutting New South Wales politicians and their inability to build a ground of proper proportions combined with the clean cut, law abiding nature of the Dockers players, Fremantle would be the club on the brink of being stripped of their premiership and not the Eagles.

Not happy to rest on those laurels, Freo have gone an imported an All Australian forward into the mix and his skull busting, no nonsense track pony. Fremantle's forward line alone should have been enough to scare the Power into forfeit as Solomon and Tarrant line up with Matthew Pavlich, Justin Longmuir, Ryan Murphy and Aaron Sandilands to produce an attack with more prongs than an echidna in a punk rock band who’s just put his foot through a garden rake.

Up in the centre, they've got a bloke by the name of Josh Carr who, during his brief stay in South Australia, was given an award for being better than every other player on the Port Adelaide list - and that was when they were good. He's got Peter Bell, popular fancy for the Brownlow Medal, at his side, Paul Hasleby who's in the best condition he's been in since winning the Norwich Rising Star Award and Aaron Sandilands in the ruck to feed the ball to him like a nurse to a West Coast Eagle in a yellow fever vaccine induced coma.

Down back, Shane Parker has put together another crack defense (not to be confused with the Eagles crack midfield) Luke McPharlin is slotting into Shane's old spot at full back where he'll be forced to try and work out how Brendon Lade can call himself a forward or a ruckman; Antoni Grover is fighting fit and restarting his campaign for All Australian half back; Roger Hayden and James Walker seem to have had rails installed down either side of Subiaco Oval over the pre-season so they could bring the ball out of defense with even more efficiency; Stephen Dodd and Ryan Crowley have spent most of the pre-season in Guantanamo Bay, torturing prisoners in preparation for their tagging duties; and David Mundy spent his summer in the West Indies teaching the locals how to be more cool.

All in all it's one of the great mismatches of modern footy. A finals hardened, professionally drilled, focused, well oiled machine against a few aging middle of the road footballers and some young kids who could do with another half a dozen seasons in the SANFL before getting a run off the bench. The only real worry for Fremantle is that Port's delusions of grandeur could see one of their players hurt themselves – because that job belongs to Fremantle.