After The Game v St Kilda - With SNAPS TRULY

What a scenario. Freo take on the Saints in Round 1. And it is a Ross Lyon led St Kilda.

The prospect was delicious. Made more so by the fact eight of their best players were missing. Surely even Ross Lyon, that cagey old chancer would not be able to summon victory on this day?

No chance.

Oh sure, we fans had some questions at the start of a new season. “Have we evolved from last year?” “Who will kick our goals?” “Will we miss Rory Lobb?”

Well, NO to that last one. Rory spent his first day in Bulldogs colours wandering aimlessly around their forward line picking specks of light out of the air and putting them in an invisible basket …

No OF COURSE we’re not going to miss Rory, not when it takes less than A MINUTE for Luke Jackson to slip a cheeky handball to Freddy who kicks the opening goal of the season.

This should be good!

But it’s not.

It’s not good at all.

What begins to reveal itself, is that the evil sorcerer Lyon – having gathered together members of the Saints Under 18 team and a couple of cheer squad members to make up the numbers, has already got them doing, what he loves his teams to do – run hard, chase hard and take all the oxygen out of the air.

Our midfielders could not gain the ascendancy. Our forward line was a disaster. Indeed, the only guaranteed path to goal seemed to be through free kicks and then a fifty-metre penalty.

Our magnificent champ Nathan Fyfe had a miserable day. Repeatedly run down like an ageing wildebeest in a National Geographic documentary, he did look to be proving Darwin’s evolutionary theories correct.

Matt Taberner ran and ran and ran, but seldom in the direction of the goals and he was rather predictably subbed out with a sore finger.

Josh Treacy blew cyclonic, but only to give away free kicks.

Into the third quarter, we did rally and kick our seventh goal. Surely now the game is ours for the taking?

We will head into the forward line on another 35 occasions and will not kick another goal.

WE DID NOT KICK ANOTHER GOAL!

Our defenders were stellar. Our small forwards tried their best, but this was bleak.

By the end of the game, I was doing the thing I promised I would not do this season. I was stress eating Cheezels again. And that annoying sporting cliché started banging around in my head – again.

“It’s the defeat you can deal with, it’s the hope that kills you.”

And when the siren blew and Ross raised his arms in triumph a cold invisible wind blew through the hearts of Freo players, coaches, staff and supporters.

Ross had clearly taken the learnings and learnt from them.

* By our new, multi-talented and amazingly insightful footy scribe, SNAPS TRULY. Snaps has seen and done it all. He may or may not have been a fringe player at Fremantle. Who knows? Don’t miss Snaps’ report after each Freo Dockers match throughout the season.

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