Time for Revenge: Part Deux

There are some wounds that time does not heal. Time merely files them away in a drawer marked "Open on the day of the revenge game." Today, we open the drawer.

Let us cast our minds back to the evening of September 6, 2025. Optus Stadium. 57,507 of us, hoarse and hopeful, watching a young Dockers side claw their way back from 26 points down in the third quarter to hit the front late in an elimination final. Memories of the 2022 Bulldogs game still fresh in the mind, we knew what this team could do. Luke Jackson marked and goaled to put us six points up with 3:21 to play. We were there. We were THROUGH. And then, in the cruellest sequence this football club has endured in a long and proud history of enduring cruel sequences, Mac Andrew squared it up, and 248-game veteran David Swallow, playing his final season, nudged through a behind with nine seconds remaining to put the Suns one point in front. Coast-to-coast in nine seconds was never happening. Gold Coast won their first final in fifteen years of trying. At our expense.

We have not forgotten. We have not come close to forgetting. And on Sunday afternoon, the Gold Coast Suns must fly across the entire continent, walk back into the very stadium where they broke our hearts, and answer for it against a Fremantle side that is, quite frankly, still pissed.

The Fremantle that lost that elimination final was the fourth-youngest side in the competition, a team learning how to win. The Fremantle that runs out on Sunday is the outright minor premiership favourite, sitting at 13-1, riding a record thirteen-game winning streak, fresh off a mature, grinding victory over Geelong that avenged our only loss of the home-and-away season. We are collecting revenge fixtures like trading cards now. Gold Coast are simply next in the album.

This is a team that put 155 points on North Melbourne a few weeks ago. A team whose three-pronged forward line of Treacy, Voss and Amiss has become the most feared attacking unit in the league. A team welcoming back ruckman Sean Darcy for his first AFL game since Round 5 as its sole change, because when you have the healthiest list in the competition and a thirteen-game winning streak, you don't exactly need to be giving the magnets a workout.

And how are our friends from the Glitter Strip travelling? Gloriously, the wheels are falling off. The Suns sat fourth on the ladder not so long ago, they now sit ninth, having lost four matches in a row, their finals position suddenly in genuine peril. Their much-vaunted on-ball brigade of Anderson and Rowell, so dominant in that elimination final, has lately been made to look second-rate, getting smashed in clearances and contested ball. The motor that was supposed to be completed by the arrival of Christian Petracca is misfiring.

Damien Hardwick now brings that wounded, out-of-sorts outfit on what has been described, (accurately) as the toughest trip in the competition: across the continent to face the ladder leaders in their fortress. They do so without Daniel Rioli (jaw), and without the suspended Ben Clohesy. The timing, from a purely Fremantle perspective, could not be better if we had scripted it ourselves.

Do they have any hope?

The forecast for Sunday carries a real chance of showers, and a wet, greasy Optus Stadium deck is precisely the surface that suited Gold Coast's contested, stoppage-heavy game in that elimination final. Rain turns football into a lottery, and a lottery is the great equaliser for a lesser side. We would prefer a dry ball and a fast game so that our superior movement can do the talking. But we will take what the heavens give us, as a former coach might have said, anywhere, anytime.

Gold Coast have beaten us in finals on this ground inside the last ten months. A cornered, desperate team fighting for its September life is a dangerous animal, and the Suns have shown that at their best they can match it with anyone for four quarters. Anderson and Rowell are genuine stars. Bailey Humphrey is a problem. Freo fans remember our long history of playing teams into form.

FREMANTLE IN: Sean Darcy (returns for revenge) OUT: Mason Cox (the old fella needs a rest)

GOLD COAST OUT: Daniel Rioli (jaw), Ben Clohesy (suspended), Oscar Adams (Not good enough) IN: Will Powell, Charlie Ballard, Ben Jepson

THE VERDICT

Revenge, 14 mental health sessions complete, another ghost buried.

Everything points the one way. The ladder leaders, on a club-record run, at home, the healthiest list in the league, against a side that has lost four on the bounce, flown across the country, and arrives missing key players with its season quietly unravelling. The only realistic threat to a Fremantle victory is the weather, and even a wet afternoon should not be enough to save a Gold Coast outfit this out of sorts from a Dockers side this locked in.

So Treacy, Voss and Amiss feast. Serong and Brayshaw own the middle. Darcy gives us a genuine ruck presence back. And somewhere in the final term, the margin balloons out to the kind of number that lets us all stand and roar and finally, FINALLY, exorcise the memory of those last 2 minutes in September.

FREMANTLE by 5–8 goals