After The Game With Snaps Truly - Rd 4 2026 v Adelaide

A very Good Friday thanks for asking.

A very Happy Easter long weekend to you whatever devotion you clasp to your heart or extraordinary public spectacle you choose to feel a bit emotional about.

Fremantle fittingly spent Good Friday in Adelaide. It was Mark Twain who famously declared it ‘the city of churches’ back in the 1890’s, and who quipped and counted that it offered ‘64 ways to heaven.’

Make that 65. The Adelaide Oval is arguably the city’s finest cathedral. Evident further tonight when the locals unfurled that bloody beautiful Foodland banner.

They’re a funny mob the Crow Eaters.

So proud of being free settlers rather than convicts and perhaps our most elegant speakers of the King’s English. Politically odd. Sometimes progressive – think Don Dunstan in pink hotpants – sometimes just Tory weirdos – please don’t think about Alexander Downer in fishnets and most recently happy to flirt with the populist politics of grievance with Dumb Nation, suggesting that sometimes they think hard about almost nothing at all.

Home to the magnificent Chappell brothers – who both left to live elsewhere and, of course, Humphrey B Bear, who I once met as a child and who, when he shook my hand, appeared to have five suspiciously human fingers inside that brown paw.

I’m just suggesting they’re not always who they claim to be.

Nor is their favourite football team. Minor Premiers in 2025 before going out in straight sets and losers of two of their first three matches this year, after having led late.

And tonight Adelaide would have to play catch up again as Freo went to town – probably to enjoy a lovely dinner at the Central Market – before returning with another blistering first half.

Our footy was so good, there were moments I had to steal a glance at Mrs Truly to be sure this wasn’t some crazy fever dream.

Jye Amiss leading hard and marking strongly. And kicking arrow straight. Pat Voss and Josh Treacy taking big clunkers and feasting on a buffet of opportunity provided by our big men and our mids. A high tackle gives Dudley a goal. Andy Brayshaw dashes through the middle and stabs it low and long on the run from outside 50.

Irrepressible. Ruthless.

And at the long break, Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks was overheard muttering ‘Forgive them father, they know not what they do. They can’t win a bloody clearance and half of them have barely had a touch.’

Freo led by 25 points and should have sealed victory early in the third, such was the almost metronomic regularity with which the ball was delivered to Treacy, Amiss and then Voss. All of whom missed the thoroughly gettable.

It took some Bolton brilliance to deliver to Amiss and when he converted for his fourth – an equal career high performance – Freo’s lead was out to a game high 34 points.

After which …

Well, for quite a while I don’t know what happened.

All I could hear was Mark Riccuitto. And I couldn’t work out how his voice had not broken yet. And the more he growled and yodelled in the same sentence I began to wonder about him. Did he vote for Dumb Nation? Has he ever met Humphrey B Bear? Or been to the Adelaide Writers’ Festival? Or chosen to boycott it? Is he perhaps a member of a book club with Tony Modra?

While I pondered all this, Adelaide rattled on seven goals in a row and JOM missed a kick on goal that belonged in an AAMI Insurance ad – complete with broken car windscreen. The Crows suddenly ten points clear and the crowd roaring.

They say footy these days is all about momentum swings and perhaps Freo had to give up the lead to again focus on what mattered. Because what we saw in the final term was the performance of a fast-maturing side.

Caleb Serong dug in and won nearly every contested ball.

Matt Johnson, who last year might have panicked in late game midfield congestion, danced through it superbly.

Murphy Reid dived in and dinked out.

Jordi Clark chipped and charged brilliantly.

And when Treacy kicked a dribbler from the right forward pocket, Freo had regained the lead.

Adelaide might have, could have, should have … but didn’t.

And when the magnificent Alex Pearce desperately threw himself like Superman out of a window to smother another Crows attempt on goal, Freo had done enough to hold on and win by two points.

How our heroic captain must love this place. Last year he took a towering last-minute mark against Port and kicked the goal that lifted Fremantle into the Top Four. Tonight, they sit third.

We have risen.

Collingwood next Friday night at the same venue.

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 2026 season.

~ You’ll find more Snaps Truly right here.

~ If you’d like to COMMENT on this or any of our stories, don’t hesitate to email our Editor.

~ WHILE YOU ARE HERE –