I’ve never seen Freaky Friday andbeyond the Jamie Lee Curtis promo video, I’m not going to watch the legacy sequel.
It’s a real blind spot for me in my personal movie repertoire.
I can worry no more, though.
I watched it on Saturday afternoon at Marvel Stadium when the Dogs and Dockers played off in what was, in all likelihood, an Elimination Final.
In the second and third quarters the Dockers and Bulldogs body-swapped.
The stodgy Dockers let their players play while the freewheeling Bulldogs got stuck in the mud.
More than an analysis of the game, though, this piece is a mea culpa.
I wrote a preview of this game last week where I called it “A Battle for the Soul of the Season”.
The general premise was that this has been a crappy year where footy has reverted to the Paul Roos bad old days of flood and defend first.
The Dockers, a talented attacking team, were among the worst examples of that this season.
They have a good attacking list but generally don’t let them attack.
The Dogs, with a relatively similar level of attacking personnel, played diametrically opposite footy where they attack and defend with a view to kicking goals and rewarding that with a finals berth would be better for the game on the whole.
What an idiot.
The version of Fremantle that I saw was what I wrote the Bulldogs were, particularly in the second and third terms.
In the first quarter, I was feeling very smug as the Bulldogs were doing Bulldogs things.
They owned the game in their front half, dominated at clearance and generally occupied Fremantle territory like they’re…anyway.
And Fremantle, other than the Bulldogs missing, were generally powerless to stop it.
It didn’t matter how many times they were turned over at half forward, they kept chipping it around slowly until an inevitable kick long and down the line to contests they were losing.
It was very Justin Longmuir.
The only times they ran and handballed, they looked dangerous particularly with Murphy Reid and Sam Switkowski.
However, those moments felt more like Tony and Christopher stealing wine from the Vipers rather than Danny Ocean and co. robbing the Bellagio.
Crimes of opportunity.
However, when they got the ball going forward, especially with handball, they smartly kept forwards at home knowing that the Dogs would defend close to their own goal and leave their awful key backs to fend for themselves.
That long ground left Treacy and especially Amiss room to give the Dogs defenders fits in that first term, even with limited supply.
But something flipped in the second term for Freo.
I think it came down to Alex Pearce.
With the Dockers down 29-20 with 7:30 gone in the second term, Alex Pearce changed the comportment of the game.
Docker pressure inside 50 forced a dump kick out of defence by the Bulldogs.
Pearce marked it about 70 out from goal and, instead of going back over his mark, he played on and forced the issue.
He handballed to the boundary to Bailey Banfield, who also started to defend more aggressively, and Banfield squared his kick to Luke Jackson who predictably outpointed the awful Rory Lobb again to kick a goal and make it 29-26.
It was like the rest of the team got permission from their skipper to just go.
From there, the Dockers started leaving defence long almost exclusively via Luke Jackson, who is a brilliant player to kick to in those situations because he’s so good on the ground and in the air.
A byproduct of these long exits, often off turnovers forced in their half, was that the Dockers were able to bypass the Dogs front half pressure game and make their defenders defend.
They then had constantly had onrushing players rolling past for handballs when Jackson would bring it to ground, bringing real momentum into their game.
In a sense, they made the feature of the Reid and Switkowski running through the Dogs defence in the first quarter, the entire car.
I cannot fathom how Luke Beveredge didn’t send Tim English behind the contest to give his defence some cover, especially given that the Dogs often leave defence via Sam Darcy in essentially the same way.
In any case, Fremantle kept those forwards deep and continued to torture Rory Lobb and Jed Busslinger, with Patrick Voss getting in on the party as well.
As an aside, I can’t think of too many worse key back games than the one Rory Lobb played.
He was dreadful and the Dockers with their pinpoint and speedy inside 50 entries, always from different angles, were like Sid from Toy Story burning holes in him and Busslinger with a magnifying glass.
If Carlton burns it all down, the Dogs cannot possibly overpay for Jacob Weitering.
Trade away the rights to Luke Darcy’s next kid.
In the end Dockers kicked 75 points from the back half, clearly their best return all year, and the most the Bulldogs have conceded that way, which, given the way the Dogs have defended this season, is saying something.
Fremantle was magnificent, even with the Dogs huge last quarter.
But this is what they should be.
The only thing on a personnel level that they’re missing is bounce from the back half outside of Clark.
They have speedy transition players and small forwards in Reid, Switkowski, Frederick and Bolton.
They have key forwards with Treacy, Amiss, and Voss. They have a star-filled midfield with Serong, Young, Brayshaw and Jackson.
Put all that together, add a potato and baby they got a stew going!
Justin Longmuir’s game plan is that potato.
He has been so unwilling to release the shackles from this team and let them fulfil their attacking promise.
But in the biggest game of their season, he did it.
If he keeps his charges loose, there’s no reason they can’t win it.