In last season’s preliminary final at
Subiaco Oval, Fremantle gave the Swans (and us all) a footballing lesson,
putting on a display of pure defensive football unrivalled since Port
Adelaide’s demolition of North Adelaide in the 1989 SANFL Grand Final. If the
Dockers were to upset the minor premiers at the Olympic Stadium, they would
need to repeat that magnificent performance.
There was just one problem: it’s been
bucketing down intermittently here in the Emerald City for the last fortnight.
The rain brought the Melbourne Storm unstuck against Easts at Moore Park last
Saturday night, and it threatened to do the same to the purple-clad chaps from
the State of Excitement. The damp surface promised a return to the wet-weather
footy of yore, as it was played by men like Matthews and Carey back in the Good
Old Days before this great game of ours was basketball-ified and Etihad-ised.
It didn’t feel so much like Heritage Round
as Multicultural Round when Tendai Mzungu slotted home the first of the match.
Buddy Franklin and Matthew Pavlich were among the scorers as both teams went into
the first break with three goals, the Swans leading by three as a result of
their superior tally of behinds. Pavlich was again on the scoresheet when he
finished off a coast-to-coast Fremantle play to put the visitors ahead with the
first score of the second quarter. Ben McGlynn answered straight away for the
Bloods, and then the match took a defensive turn.
It was twenty minutes before we witnessed
the next major score. There were a few behinds from some inaccurate stabs at
the sticks, but with a wet ground and two sides skilled at high pressure
defensive football, the quarter was permeated with smothers, blocks,
one-percenters, and general tit-for-tat. Everyone thought Buddy would break the
deadlock, but Alex Silvagni mercilessly brought him down. Jarrad McVeigh found
Kurt Tippett at the goal post, then Pavlich answered with a soccer-style goal
with three Sydney defenders on his tail, and the home side led by five points
at the half.
At the mid-point of the third stanza, i biancorossi led by three. Two more
goals had been kicked: McGlynn from a free kick and Mzungu from a turnover.
This quarter had the same feel about it as the second until Lewis Jetta marked
and goaled, and then Adam Goodes did the same after getting underneath a bomb,
and the margin stood at fifteen. Kieren Jack’s bending effort after the siren
extended it to twenty-two. Franklin and Tippett had been quiet, and John
Longmire’s decision to move them into the midfield turned out to be a
masterstroke.
La
viola knew they had to come out firing. Cameron
Sutcliffe got them started, and when Pavlich grabbed a bouncing ball and
swirled it in from the pocket, the comeback was on. Franklin hit back
immediately with a brace of goals, and all of a sudden we had a shoot-out: four
goals had been scored before the quarter had been going for three minutes. The
watersiders will rue the missed opportunities of that quarter: the missed set
shots, the pushes forward wasted for a lack of targets, and the brilliant Swans
pressing that forced Silvagni to skew one into the stands.
The minor premiers put the icing on the
cake with a polished move in the final minute. Rhyce Shaw to Franklin, back to
Shaw, to Franklin again, and a punt up forward to find the waiting arms of Dan
Hannebery. They matched the vanguard party of Marxism-Lyonism at their own
(defensive) game, and continued to excel when the match broke apart into a
shoot-out. Worthy minor premiers, and your humble correspondent fears what they
can do to his Cats in two weeks’ time.
Sydney 13.15.93 – Fremantle
10.9.69
Goals: Franklin 3, McGlynn 3, Goodes,
Hannebery, Jack, Jetta, Parker, Pyke, Tippett (Syd.); Pavlich 4, Mzungu 2, Fyfe,
Mundy, Sutcliffe, Walters (Frem.)
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