After The Game With Snaps Truly - Rd 21 2025 V Carlton

I didn’t go to the game.

I never miss a game.

But for some reason, my instinct to hunker down in a storm, overcame my usual ‘anywhere anytime’ loyalty.

And so, I sat at home instead – safe and warm – and watched Fremantle celebrate Retro Round, by deciding to role-play some of the worst moments from their thirty-one-year-old handbook of misadventure.

Right from the first bounce, Carlton was on top. Kicking four goals and winning 12 consecutive inside 50’s.

Could Freo really afford to be this indifferent to a team that however awful they are – have still won five of the last six games we’ve played?

It took the unlikeliest of goalkickers – Oscar McDonald to get us on the board, but it was perfectly in keeping with the moment, that he would then run back to defence, try a hack kick off the ground – miss – and then give up the answering goal. Carlton led by 18 points at the first break.

And as the rain beat down outside, so the nagging self-doubt began its cold creep. All well and good to beat Hawthorn and then sneak home against Collingwood at the MCG – but put us among our own – the desperate grifters and grafters who cling to footy’s lower rungs and we succumb.

As if they whisper ‘never forget where you’re from’ and …
‘plop’ … we’re sucked, almost irresistibly, back into the primordial goop of the Damian Drum years.

Good old Retro Round.

Worse was to follow. Hayden Young was again subbed out of the game with injury. His replacement was Neal Erasmus, who was not to blame, but I blamed him anyway.

Voss took a strong mark to cut the margin, but Carlton then kicked the next two. I can’t tell you who got the goals, because I had turned away.

Wondering, because I was alone – if now might be the time to step out of the house and walk down to South Beach – remove my clothes – fold them neatly – and then step into the roiling sea and bid farewell to this team and this flawed idea.

I didn’t though. I was no CY O’Connor and I didn’t even own a horse.

Freo trailed by 24 points at the half.

Would we turn up after the break?

I had to believe the answer was yes or the water would begin lapping around my ankles.

Jye Amiss opened the scoring in the third.

Luke Jackson kicked the next.

And Murphy Reid, unsighted in the first half, now went to work brilliantly.

Carlton answered through Harry McKay, but just before the siren, Amiss bagged his second. Freo were now winning most of the stoppage clearances, if not everything out of the middle and trailed by just eight points at the final change.

It was telling for me to watch Sam Switkowski kick the opening goal of the last quarter. He did so, quickly, and emphatically, and celebrated with real joy. Why was he looking so confident? Why was I so doubtful?

It’s Retro Round that’s why. Where ghosts of failure rise up and go boo, just to see how fragile a fan can be. Switta had no such fears and with good reason.

Treacy was huge in the second half and when Amiss found him with a good pass, his thumping conversion gave Freo the lead for the first time.

One kick of the footy took the Dockers from eighth to fifth on the live ladder.

Treacy then threaded a handball towards Dudley Do Right and he dribbled the conversion.

Moments later, he did even better. Bombing from 50.

All who had been quiet – Serong and Brayshaw among them – had lifted significantly.

Voss goaled and then cantered in and delivered Amiss his third.

And with less than thirty seconds remaining, Voss banged home another. Freo winners by 27 points – completing a 51-point turnaround.

They played better than I did. Retro Round invited me to remember days past and I was twitchy and lost my nerve.

Mercifully, Freo held theirs.

Three rounds to go. Keep winning.

And it would be remiss of me to not congratulate the Eagles on their second wooden spoon in three years. I hear that you have gone to the AFL to beg for special assistance, but I like to think most of your failings have been the result of appalling management, hubris and the indulgence of an ageing list, rather than cruel circumstance.

I say, suffer in your jocks.

Yours truly,

Snaps Truly.

* By our 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. Don’t miss Snaps’ report after each Freo Dockers match here on the Shipping News throughout the 2025 season.

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