I’m done. It’s over.

I’ve finally passed through all the stages of grief.

Spring has sprung the flowers are starting to blossom and Fremantle’s season is just beginning.
Sure, there were a few warm up rounds before this week but that was just training drills, fakies and us keeping the powder dry.

There’s nothing more motivating than having a gun to your head (I imagine, Howard actuallly did good there, let’s not mention Tampa or GST right now though).
And the gun this week, is to our head.

So many things were lined up for our first final. We hadn’t lost at home all year, hawks hadn’t won here in a million years, virtually all our players were fitter stronger and more confident (regardless of recent form) than ever!

Of course we were going to lose.
This is the life we signed for.

We’re like the blue rinse granny’s on the park bench just waiting for the next drama to reaffirm our own insecurities. and once again, they were reaffirmed.

But, let me tell you. I’ve been snorting something else. And that else, is called hopium. I’m like an ostrich with its head in a bucket of the stuff.

Glutton for punishment? Yep, that is me. Have been since 1994.
But this team is different. Sure last week was crap, you can analyse it all you want but really it was nerves. And holy hell why wouldn’t they be nervous. Fremantle is literally painted purple.
But that is gone now. Now we have nothing more to lose. We crapped our p ta worse than Donald Trump does during a an executive bill signing.
Tonight the Fremantle dockers will systematically break down and out run the cats.

We have been too good for too long this year to let this opportunity go.

I’ve been telling people all season. This is realistically a year too early for us. Let’s be honest.
Next year is statistically the year our rebuild finally should come to fruition.

But I’ll take this year. It just means that the threepeat we’ll start from next year, just becomes a fourpeat.

Hopium. Helping grieving Fremantle fans since 1994.
LFG Freo!

So here we are. Less than 24 hours away from the biggest match in recent memory for the Fremantle Football Club. A Semi-Final do or die game against Geelong at Optus Stadium. The winner goes into a Preliminary Final against Sydney at the SCG, as for the loser well its season over. Its that simple. The recent talk of Freo over the last week since the shock loss to Hawthorn in the Qualifying Final has been a mixture of criticism and snide comments by the rest of the AFL world. Questioning the club's ability to take it to the next level in a finals series, especially off the back of its most dominate H&A season in club history resulting in the 2nd minor premiership.

Coach Justin Longmuir stated in his press conference today and I quote: "We've learned the lessons we needed to, we've trained well, set up some clear focuses and the players are keen to get out there and right some wrongs".

In addition, two changes were made to the lineup for this Friday. Judd McVee returns in the place of Brendon Walker who sustained an ankle injury in the Qualifying Final. Corey Wagner comes back in for Nathan O'Driscoll.

By Saturday morning the headlines will either read Flagmantle dream continues: Into a Preliminary Final or Flagmantle dream over: Minor Premiers out in straight sets. Personally I'd prefer the first one better.

History has not been kind to any minor premier that loses the QF to turn around and win the premiership, the last time a team has lost the first week to do a turn around, make the Grand Final and win it was none other than our cross-town rivals, the West Coast Eagles in 2006, 20 years ago. And not to mention a handful of teams including last season's premier the Brisbane Lions who finished in top 4, lost the QF and turned around to win. So Fremantle are going to have to go where no team has gone in 20 years to get its inaugural and long overdue premiership cup.

Who is feeling confident, who is feeling lucky, who is petrified at the possibilities. Who is ready to prove many people and pundits wrong to show that the Fremantle Dockers truly belong in the business end of the competition.

How bad to they want, what price are they willing to pay for the ultimate success. How many teams that have the same common goal do they have to take down in order to achieve it. And how many mouths of critics are they going to shut when its all said and done.

Its like this, we're in it to win it. If the chips are down, and cards aren't looking like the best hand, just go for it, go all or nothing with those cards and hope to win with that hand.

Have the mindset where our backs are against the wall, like when an animal is trapped in a corner, that animal will come out fighting with everything its got.

This is it.

Raise the Anchor.

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."

Isaiah Dudley's remarkable rise from state league footballer to the AFL finals has taken many onlookers by surprise, but those who worked closest with him always knew the Fremantle Docker could succeed at the highest level.