- Banned
- #1
The fact Freo is geographically a separate area from Perth and Subi with a 20km distance helped. We don't get any advantage of West Lakes and Alberton being 5kms apart.
There's another difference I noticed when I was recently in Port Adelaide - the state of each area. Freo was heavily gentrified in the 80s and is now a place families and young people go out for dinner and drinks. Port is seriously the closest thing I've seen to Detroit in Australia, aside from maybe Port Kembla.
Kids in Perth these days have generally grow up with the notion that Fremantle is a cool suburb to visit and a place of enormous history - it was founded before Perth.
It used to have the impression of being a dodgy area overrun by wharfies and criminals but that is largely gone. My impression is that Port still retains that somewhat, maybe just the sense of being a run down, depressed area.
So I doubt the club can take much credit for its relative popularity. It is the city of Fremantle that draws people to the club, as its one of the few pockets of culture in the endless morass of plastic suburbs with coloured concrete driveways.