Do you book your flights, or cool your jets? Is it Wharfie Time, or squeaky bum time? Was it one of the best home and away wins of recent years, or just another four points in the winter grind? It’s hard to know what to do, or how to react, if you’re a Fremantle person right now. Do you go the full West Australian newspaper, or the full Justin Longmuir? Are you still anchored down by the last 30 years? Will you only believe, as some Geelong people only truly believed in 2007, when you’re 15 goals up halfway through the final term of a grand final?
Analysis of recent AFL history is skewed by the introduction of new clubs and new rounds. But the past quarter of a century provides a good snapshot of how clubs in a comparable position to Fremantle right now ultimately fared. Since 2000, only seven teams were in as strong a position as the Dockers at this point of the season. Of those, three ended up winning the premiership, and three lost the grand final. The runners-up included the 2009 Saints, who were undefeated at this point of the season, and the 2005 Eagles, who were three games clear of second.
The only team to miss the grand final were the 2015 Dockers, who’d lost just two games after round 18. Though the club was too slow to realise it, it was that group’s last chance to win a flag. The hinge moment came in the final quarter of the preliminary final, when they had all the momentum against a crack Hawthorn side. Halfway through the final term, Tendai Mzungu switched play with a 20-metre kick across half back. His target was Tommy Sheridan, playing his 38th game. Hot on his hammer was Cyril Rioli, probably the last person in Australia you’d want in your vicinity at a moment like that. Sheridan dropped the easiest of marks. Rioli mugged him, turned on a dime, slammed home a 50-metre goal and gave the crestfallen, butter-fingered kid a dig in the kidneys.
Dockers coach Ross Lyon had his head in his hands. Game, season, era over. The Hawks cruised to their third premiership in a row. Over the next few years, Lyon wore his players down, and wore out his welcome in Perth. His sacking was as cold blooded as his appointment. He shrugged his shoulders, did his farewell press conference in a local park and enrolled in a behavioural economics course at Harvard.
Fremantle’s captain in that 2015 preliminary final was Matthew Pavlich, who is now running the Sydney Swans, following a stint in the media that included being an equestrian commentator at the Paris Olympics. He watched last week’s top-of-the-ladder clash on what seemed like a business class recliner chair, perhaps pondering how many more goals he could have kicked with this current Dockers midfield feeding him. He would have liked what he saw from his Swans, however, with the visitors devouring space and Chad Warner goose-stepping out of stoppages. So inaccurate were the Dockers that the normally imperturbable Longmuir was smashing phones.
But it took the Dockers 30 seconds against the Swans to remind the competition what they’re capable of, and why they’re premiership favourites. Everyone watching that game was waiting for Wharfie Time. Few know who the faceless person is whose fingers hover over the activation button. It could be the Fremantle CEO. It could be the marketing manager. Hell, it could be Clive Waterhouse. Whoever it is, they have great timing, and that rare and welcome quality among sizzle merchants – restraint.
The Fremantle fusillade cancelled out the need for intervention anyway. It was yet another example of how this Dockers side differs from those of Lyon’s era. They’re by no means without flaws. They can be tardy out of the gates, and they’re vulnerable on their last line of defence. But irrespective of how badly they’re kicking and how well the opposition’s playing, they know they can turn up the wick and kick a lot of goals in a short amount of time. There will come a point – in a home final, and maybe even in a grand final – where they’ll be forced to gather themselves, to stem a tide, and to go on the attack, and they now have about half a dozen performances to draw from.
It helps, with all the longing for the breakthrough flag, and with a local newspaper that tends towards the hyperbolic, to have a senior coach as low key as Longmuir. He isn’t polished, or gnomic, or spoiling for a fight like other coaches. He plays the straightest bat since Chris Tavaré. He was asked to describe a game where his team didn’t kick a goal in the first half, and then piled on 100 points in the second. “It’s about process, right?” Longmuir said. “It’s about maintaining faith in the process.” Procedural isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind when describing Fremantle’s season. But the coach’s response is the perfect counterbalance to the mayhem of a night at Optus Stadium, and the hype that’s building around this remarkable team.
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