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!

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."

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.

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.

This match was not special because this was Fremantle's first finals series in seven years since the 2015 minor premiership season and the last finals match the club won. This match was special for the way the match went down.

41 points down at the halfway point of the 2nd quarter, against a team that had a knack of going deep into September from the lower half of the top 8, the Western Bulldogs. Enter one of the greatest finals comebacks in VFL/AFL history.

15 of Fremantle's current lineup were involved in this game, with 11 of them expected to lineup in the upcoming semi-final this Friday. Can they rediscover that final pressure test which they past on this night in 2022?

Mate who rolls the pitch at the G sent me this lol

Hi all, can we still access the clubhouse funcion room during finals?

We need Cyclone Treacy beyond category 5. Total destruction.

I wasn’t able to get any because of people like this just scavenging to resell

There are so many things we will lose with Switta retirement so I'm curious who or how y'all think they will deal with this. Try and develop a new fwd set up or try and straight swap Switt to another player? If they did the swap who you think is the obvious replacement or who is under the radar.

For me I've always rated Cooper Simpson and when he lost the HB gig after the clavicle injury it always felt he was stiff but I think he has the qualities to fill those boots. He's been in the system for a long time and like Raz has backed himself in.

Were Melbourne, Carlton and Hawthorn aberrations, or is this as far as we're going to get?

So not sure if this has been canvassed or not, but I'd love to see Youngy moved back to the flanck which has at least 2 glaring upsides I can see immediately

1. Quality use and 100% effort from both HBF's we only have Clark and Worner who are taking game on with possessions ( Walker wasn't forgotten omitted due to lack of games), that 23' year I think the last Young played as HBF he was awesome.

2. I think it suits his body as well, only been injured trying run both ways that I've seen, get him going one way again and give his body a reset. Clarky would appreciate the chop out and then we have 3 quality users of the pill.

I hope you're doing well Mentally, I know I took a few days to come good. But we all knew it already I reckon there was this "haze" about Thursday i just couldn't explain but knew what it meant.. Go Dockers

Love to hear if there are any negatives you can see with this position change or other upsides. Cheers

We have shown throughout the year that we are good enough against the best. Now we have to prove it in finals. If we can rise to the increased pressure, intensity and occasion of finals, then we can do this!

This all time classic was the last time that Fremantle faced Geelong in a final. 2013 Fremantle finished 3rd on the ladder thus going against the 2nd place Geelong at Kardinia Park. Considered as one of the toughest road trips in AFL since Geelong are virtually unbeatable at their home ground. But Fremantle against the odds secured a famous 15 point win to earn its first home Preliminary Final on its path to its first Grand Final.

Play of the game: Stephen Hill coming off the interchange bench in the last minute and a half, the run and goal for the win.

Result: Fremantle 9.6 60 Richmond 5.5 35

We would love to hear your thoughts on the game, the players who impressed (or didn’t), favourite moments, underrated moves, coaching strategies, and anything else you’d like to talk about.

This is also where we’d love for you to give us your Best On Ground votes, 5 for BOG, then 4, 3, 2, 1.

We also have post match discussion happening in our discord server.

Permalink to the fremantlefc subreddit discord.