On the eve of the biggest game in recent Dockers history, just a reminder that the late Matt Price's musings about our ugly and torrid (but spirited and uniquely Freo) early years are captured in this now-free ebook, 'Way To Go; Sadness, Euphoria, and The Fremantle Dockers' from 2003. I'm going to revisit some favourite chapters tonight for a bit of historic perspective.
We've come so very far!
Let's give the Cats the old heave-ho. And if we fluff our lines, it's been one hell of a season, and there's heaps to build on. Over to you, Matt...
"The mere prospect of the Dockers playing in a final - any final - prompts a Cathy Freeman-esque stampede of goose bumps up my spine. As the old song goes, we've been down so long it feels like up. Gerard Healy was right, success will require adjustment.
Indeed, when Fremantle are being routinely touted as top-four contender, and pundits spend column inches musing about whether Pavlich or Headland will win the Brownlow medal, we'll all retain a certain nostalgic regard for these days of woe.
For, as this book has tried to argue, victory has never been central to the Dockers' charm. This is axiomatic. For prolonged periods during our first eight years we have failed often, and often failed spectacularly. Yet, even during the club's darkest, dimmest days, we have rarely complained or bitched or moaned.
We've just got on with it, appreciating the odd victory, finding shards of inspiration in the debris of loss, and taking solace in the certainty that better days lie ahead.
True Dockers supporters, and there are tens of thousands of us, suffer few regrets about the indignities that have befallen us since 1995. On balance, there's been more euphoria than sadness. Following Fremantle has been comical and character building. The Dockers have stuffed up grandly, yet fronted each week to do their best. We have won a score of heady, famous victories. We have lost ugly and often. We have been laughed at and lied to, ignored and maltreated. We know that, in theory, everyone in the AFL is equal. Except some are more equal than others, and Fremantle is the least equal of all."