AFL’s ‘poor cousin’ was set up to fail... but still found its ‘soul’: Inside ‘crazy’ 31-year rise

As former Docker Robbie Haddrill was pondering the remarkable influence his good mate Justin Longmuir has had on Fremantle over a beer on Saturday, his phone buzzed with a message.

It was his mum, Marge, writing from the family farm situated in the Western Australian wheatbelt gently ribbing him for the enduring heartbreak Haddrill had inflicted on the family through his connection with the grand finalists.

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Haddrill grew up about an hour away from Longmuir’s farm near Koorda, another small wheatbelt town, and would catch the school bus each day with now Port Adelaide coach Josh and Matt Carr, both former Dockers as well.

The Haddrills had been a West Coast family. Their mailbox on the farm was painted yellow and blue. But when Haddrill was drafted by Fremantle as a rookie in 2000, he took the whole family with him.

They stuck fat, as Fremantle people do. The purple becomes a part of you. Once a Docker, always a Docker.

Saturday’s grand final against Brisbane shapes as a historic moment for Fremantle as Longmuir, a favourite son who has built the Dockers into a premiership contender, seeks to lead the club to its first flag.

Midfielder Andrew Brayshaw has noted the first Fremantle footballers to hoist the premiership cup aloft on the MCG will be considered immortals and is hoping to cement that status on Saturday against the all-conquering Brisbane Lions.

But for Haddrill and so many others whose hearts bleed purple, victory will end the jibes about the lack of silverware owned by the Dockers in what is their fourth decade in the AFL and the existential angst associated with being a Freo fan.

“I think I said to someone not too long ago that, to be honest, as a Fremantle supporter, you just want to win one so that we can all get on with our lives. It is just one of those things that is hanging over you,” he told foxsports.com.au.

“And I know my family thinks that. My mum sent me a text on the weekend saying that she blames me for all the heartbreak we have been through, because they were Eagles supporters before I got drafted … and I wrote back saying, ‘You wouldn’t have it any other way.’

“And as a Fremantle supporter, I think that is what it gets back to. Fremantle supporters, although they want that trophy in the cabinet, they probably would not want it any other way because it has been such a long road with so many bumps to get to where we are going to and hopefully that just makes it all the more sweeter if they do pull it off.”

WARRING RIVALS GIVE BIRTH TO A PURPLE HEART

When Fremantle’s inaugural chief executive David Hatt sat down to contemplate how to build a footy club back in 1994, it is doubtful he had an enduring love affair in mind.

Although there was nothing romantic about the location — a back office at the West’s former home of footy Subiaco Oval hardly sets the heart fluttering — the date he officially took the reigns is symbolic.

Valentine’s Day. It seems fitting for a club that serves as Cupid to its fan group — the tug on the purple heart strings for Fremantle fans is as strong as or if not stronger than any club in the nation — that it started on a day celebrating enduring love.

The task ahead for Hatt, though, was scarcely a summertime fling. The executive was effectively given the length of a footy season to find a coach and build a VFL/AFL team on and off the field.

“Yeah, on our first day in 1994, February the 14th, there was just myself and a secretary in a back room at Football Commission headquarters … but we had to find a coach, 45 players, the support staff, sports medicos … by September of that year,” Hatt told Fox Sports Australia on Monday.

“That was the AFL’s dictum. That is what they required us to do and to say that it was difficult is an understatement, but it was good fun.”

Matters of the heart can be rough affairs.

Having been granted entry into the AFL two months earlier after the WA Football Commission bought the licence for $4 million, an idea initially devised by rival clans with a shared love of footy and hatred of each other set about becoming whole.

East and South Fremantle were dominant forces in the WAFL early on and their enmity sparked a bitter rivalry, spiteful derbies, but also the state’s biggest footy crowd in the state for the 1979 grand final prior to the arrival of Optus Stadium.

So strong was the neighbouring club’s suspicion of each other, Hatt recalls the drama that unfolded when Fremantle’s first chairman Ross Kelly tried to arrange a meeting between the WAFL clubs.

“The feeling about football in Fremantle was markedly different than anywhere else and I think that was mostly due to the immense rivalry between East Fremantle and South Fremantle,” he said.

“When Ross Kelly was trying to arrange a meeting between the two Fremantle teams, they couldn’t even agree on where they should meet. It came at a time when they shared Fremantle Oval for training … and the feelings at a Fremantle derby were like no other.”

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The Dockers also had the misfortune of being conceived at a time when West Coast had emerged as a power under Mick Malthouse, with their first flag coming in 1992.

They were well on the way to a second in three seasons in the year Hatt was trying to pull together a list under vastly tougher list rules than West Coast had received, with former Carlton supremo come AFL senior executive Ian Collins making clear the reason.

“The cupboard was bare in Western Australia because people from other clubs and, of course, West Coast themselves, had realised that we were coming, so there was very little available in terms of experienced players available,” Hatt said.

“Everyone wrote us off and actually Ian Collins, who was then the football manager of the AFL, said that the clubs had taken a really hard line on Fremantle because they didn’t want another West Coast giant, and they were the giants of the competition at that stage.

“He said we have designed your rules to ensure that you win no more than one game, and we probably think you’ll win none, so they knew what they were handing us. But 10 weeks in, we were five and five, and actually in the eight, and I couldn’t believe it.”

FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS IN A FOOTBALL HEARTLAND

The Dockers first office sat above a St Vincent’s de Paul shop, opposite the Fremantle Post Office, that later became the club’s merchandise store and housed 15 people at a squeeze.

Fremantle Oval served as the training base but the Dockers did not have the pick of the facilities given it was South Fremantle’s home ground.

In fact, they had little at all until an office block at the oval was completed for the 2003 season, their ninth as an AFL club.

Brent Dawkins, a recruiting officer for the Dockers in Victoria and South Australia before moving west and ultimately becoming their football administrative manager, said the difference between today’s base in Cockburn is stark.

The Dockers would use the away teams locker room to change, but it was rudimentary, with sessions occasionally held at Troy Park in Attadale or at the picturesque Bicton Baths.

“Looking back, you just think how crazy it was,” Dawkins, who will be at the grand final with his family, said.

“We used to use the away training rooms because South had the better ones and they were absolutely tiny. It is just a massive difference to now.”

But Peter Mann, who was lured back to Fremantle from North Melbourne and won the club’s best-and-fairest award in its first season under Gerard Neesham, said the vision was bright.

Mann, who was the football director on the Fremantle board when Longmuir was appointed to the coaching role in late 2019, was very mindful clubs in their formation would be challenged.

North Melbourne, after all, had entered the VFL along with Hawthorn and St Kilda in 1925 almost three decades after the competition’s start and struggled with political hurdles and restrictive rules.

It was no different seven decades on for the Dockers but the 1995 Doig Medallist, who played for Claremont before starting his AFL career with the Kangaroos, knew Fremantle was fertile territory with the richest of football traditions.

“I’d come from North Melbourne and we were not overly well resourced, but you steel yourself,” the former Fremantle captain said on Tuesday.

“We all talk about the importance of building resilience and overcoming challenges … so I probably came in with that lens and I knew that we would evolve over time and would continue to improve.

“Just the foundational support and the eventual evolution of Freo meant it was always going to head into, I think, becoming one of the better, well resourced clubs.

“It was just at the start (when) we were still emerging and finding our feet a little bit that it was (difficult), but I think the soul we had as a football club — what’s that saying, that still waters run deep — I think we always had that.”

Under Gerard Neesham, a decorated WAFL player with a water polo background who played with the Swans in their first year in Sydney, the Dockers played an inventive style full of flair.

They may have been undermanned, but they bettered Collins’ expectations by far when winning eight games to finish 13th. They were away. And purple hearts were beating.

THE CONNECTIONS TO PAST AND PRESENT

One needs only to stroll through the surrounds of Fremantle, a port city nestled between the mighty Swan River and the Indian Ocean, to feel the thrall of footy amid its eclectic charms.

Fremantle Oval, sitting in the shadows of the old jail and opposite the markets, is a ripper.

Outside sits a brilliant statue depicting the famous mark South Fremantle’s John Gerovich took over East Freo’s Ray French in the 1956 preliminary final between the two bitter rivals.

More recently a magnificent mural depicting South Fremantle legends Stephen Michael and Maurice Rioli, who became the first player to win a Norm Smith Medal in a losing side when representing Richmond in the 1982 VFL grand final, sits proudly as a display of their brilliance and ties to the region.

The Indigenous history and connection to the area is incredibly important to Fremantle’s identity according to Mann.

“All my kids have grown up in Fremantle, gone to school here, and the essence of the place is that it has still got that lovely, very inclusive feeling,” he said.

“It is a bit low key, a bit calmer than Perth. The beauty of it is quite eclectic. It’s got some eccentricities to it, and … if you go back in the deep history, one great thing we’ve done at Fremantle is having that connectivity to the traditional owners.

“With the smoking ceremonies we have every year, we get a bit of an understanding of how important this area was for many thousands of years. It’s no surprise that this is the culture we’ve ended up adopting and growing into. And I think that as footy is increasingly professionalised, that becomes really important.

“I think it’s something that has been a string to our bow, that we’ve been able to maintain that connection with the essence of Fremantle more broadly, while still evolving and growing and improving in the challenges of what is a really, as (former North Melbourne coach) Denis Pagan used to say to us, a very brutal regimen of AFL football. It’s very competitive, so in maintaining that balance, we’ve done really well.”

Why purple? Kelly, the first chairman, said it was important to devise a unique identity distinct from West Coast, with whom they shared 8000 members in their first season and a rival that was for so long considered the ‘Big Brother’.

“When we decided to go for purple all those days ago, it was a controversial decision and we had some difficulty in getting it across the line with the football commission at the time and some of the board even were not all that committed to purple,” Kelly told SEN West this week

“But it seems to have worked and it has certainly distinguished us and made us different, and that is what we started out to do because when we started, the Eagles had two thirds of the Western Australian community behind them and had we not tried to do something different and controversial, we would have remained a poor cousin.

“But now we have our own personality … and I think that is a good thing because we needed to produce something that was worthy of the great football tradition that exists within Fremantle and the Fremantle area.”

If you become a Docker, the purple gets in your blood, according to Steve Butler, a former reporter at large for The West Australian who lives in a neighbouring suburb. Most who move to the Fremantle region stay there.

On any given weekend iconic Dockers Aaron Sandilands, Michael Walters and Graham Polak can be spotted at Frank Gibson Park supporting their kids’ netball exploits alongside ex-Aussie cricketer Adam Voges and former Australian Boomer Matty Knight.

Shaun McManus, who will present the cup to Alex Pearce should the Dockers win, former star Paul Hasleby, Haddrill and Lee Spurr also live in the region, so too Aussie one-day skipper Mitch Marsh and the rest of the famous cricket family.

Stop by the Bicton Tavern for a beer and you might spot Fremantle’s games record holder David Mundy having a chat with a local over a cold one. And the neighbourhood feel extends to the current stars as well.

Drop by the Stammers Supermarket on the Canning Highway and there is every chance you will bump into Hayden Young, whose ripping goal after the three-quarter time siren at the SCG last Friday sparked the comeback against the Swans, Brayshaw, Luke Jackson or Sean Darcy grabbing the milk or doing their groceries.

Gun mindfielder Caleb Serong? He is rarely spotted in the area without a footy in hand. He lives and breaths it. As to so many Dockers past and present.

“It’s sort of half expected that they all just stay there and live there because they are Fremantle to the core,” Butler said.

“They do their bit for the Dockers on game day, but they are all in at Fremantle. Once you pull on the purple, you become a Fremantle person for life.”

A FARM BOY MAKING HAY IN THE WEST

Hatt is well aware of the challenges the Dockers faced initially, but he is also mindful that there is no reason for Fremantle not to flourish from now on given how well resourced the club — with its headquarters now based in Cockburn — is now.

They have had periods where they have challenged before now.

Longmuir, Hasleby, Haddrill and a young Matt Pavlich were part of the squad that reached a preliminary final under Chris Connolly in 2006.

With the superstar Pavlich at his peak in 2013, the Dockers progressed to their first grand final under Ross Lyon but fell short against Hawthorn and were ultimately left burnt out by the time of his departure.

Fremantle was not looking for a messiah when Longmuir, who kicked one of the most memorable goals in club history to keep the Dockers finals hopes alive in 2005 before his career was blunted by the knee problem, was appointed in late 2019.

They wanted someone who could develop and nurture young players and there were many things about his character and background that impressed Fremantle’s board during the interview process.

After his playing days as a Docker were done, Longmuir worked hard to further his education as to what makes a good club tick. But he also knew it meant to bleed purple and what Fremantle meant to its community. It runs in his veins.

“He has a very strong family that he’s obviously very connected to and he had a brother that also played AFL that we all know and love as well,” Mann said.

“I think that connectivity to Freo is important. I think he understands where we come from and how you can build and grow, the soul of Fremantle and how we are really connected to our community.”

Mann also liked his family background. As Haddrill told Fox Sports Australia, kids learn to grow up quickly on a farm. If a tractor stops, they might need to fix it. A fence goes down? You have to find a solution. Longmuir was cool in a crisis.

“Personally, I did really like the fact that he had come from the country and at a very young age he had had some responsibility on his shoulders. There would have been times where he would have had to problem solve on his own and sort things out,” Mann said.

“Obviously … and I played with him very briefly, but when he left football, he went out and he sourced some really good learnings. He’s paid tribute to Neale Daniher for some of the guidance that he got from him, and then going to such a good club like West Coast that was successful, then getting a similar experience by going across to Collingwood, he’d invested in his craft of coaching.

“Everyone presents pretty well (when going for a coaching job). Everyone has a very good understanding of the game plan and the strategy and tactics they want to evolve. But I think Justin had a little bit of an edge on the way he wanted to approach coaching, and the way he wanted to impart lessons and wisdom onto the players, and the way he articulated that I thought was fantastic.

“That was, in my personal view and obviously as one of the decision makers, I think that was where I saw that this guy could potentially take us further and continue our improvement.

“I really liked the way he approached the actual craft of coaching players to go out and play for each other, and I think he’s done that.”

That is not to say it has been a smooth progress as critics have circled, even as recently as this month after they were beaten by Hawthorn in a qualifying final.

He has developed a young list bolstered by the recruitment of stars including Luke Jackson and Shai Bolton, but after finishing fifth in 2022, the Dockers missed the finals over the next two seasons before finishing sixth last year.

But Haddrill, who spent significant time in rehabilitation alongside Longmuir as they both nursed dodgy knee joints that curtailed their careers, said resilience was a key strength of his former teammate, who was honoured on Tuesday night as the AFL Coaches Association’s coach of the season.

“There are a few parallels between farming and footy and resilience is one of them,” he said.

“Farmers go through a lot of ups and downs in a year, as does a footy player, and there’s also the work ethic. You have got to get up and grind most days and I think that ethic is instilled in Longy. He’s never been afraid to roll his sleeves up.

“The problem solving aspect is quite real as well. You have to figure your way through a problem. And I think all those little things have shone through in his coaching.

“There was probably a bit of pent up anxiety among everyone when they lost that first final, that after all this hard work and all this good footy, (it would) be disappointing to see them go out of the final series in that way, so it was just a big sigh of relief that the season they put together has been rewarded with giving them a shot at the big one.”

BUILD THAT MAN A STATUE

Fremantle was going off last Friday night as the Dockers launched their stunning comeback against Sydney.

Butler said he had never seen anything like it along the cappuccino strip, a sensation Haddrill said was evident as well during a phone call he received from his son who was celebrating in the heart of Fremantle that night.

It could well prove the same on Saturday in Perth and in Melbourne, with Dockers fans coming from all corners of the world for their second appearance in a grand final on Saturday.

Mann and his family lob on Thursday. Hatt arrives in Melbourne a day. He has friends flying via Singapore and Hobart, while others are coming via the Nullarbor and Adelaide.

It is a long way from that first Valentine’s Day for Fremantle in a back office of the WA footy commission in 1994, but Hatt said he is certain that his heart will be pounding.

“I’m unable to contemplate the state of being that I will be in on Saturday, because I was there for the first grand final loss in 2013,” he said.

“For whatever reason and I can’t put a finger on it exactly but I think it’s because I never expected much in 2013 because I thought we were a bit light on, but this is a different team. It’s got depth and it’s got quality across the board.

“They finished in first position on the ladder for all sorts of good reasons, one of which is that they’re a very, very good side that bats all down the order and I’m reasonably confident.

“But you have to respect the fact that Brisbane are very good also, and they’ve done it twice, and this is their fourth grand final in a row, and they’ve got a terrific side. So it should be a really good game. I hope that it’s played in good conditions, and I’m looking forward to it and very excited.”

If Fremantle happens to create club history on Saturday, Butler suspects it will not only be Brayshaw and the Dockers players who are immortalised.

“They’ll build a statue of Justin Longmuir and put it right next to the one of John Gerovich,” he said.

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