In the spirit of the first game of our inaugural premiership year, I thought I’d share a memory of how I first got into the Dockers in their inaugural year. 
I was 10 and my family and I immigrated from Europe to Australia several years earlier. I had a strong accent, we weren't wealthy and so I couldn't afford to wear the same clothes as the other kids; I felt like an outsider. All my primary school friends were into footy, so during recess and lunch time we would kick a small footy on the primary school oval; imagining four of the metal poles on the back of the school fence as goal posts, I hardly knew what I was doing or which angle to kick the ball, I do remember kicking it 90 degrees off (the long way) sometimes. On some school days, some of the kids wore their favourite team’s guernsey (my best friend was from Colac and his team was Geelong). Being in Adelaide, most of the other kids barracked the Crows. I didn’t have a team but I wanted a my own guernsey and wasn’t going to be an Adelaide Crows one - in a public Adelaide school in the 90s, being a young, foreign kid with an accent that stood out and wasn’t quite accepted at the time had its own set of problems so I didn't want to be an Adelaide supporter. I didn't know much about footy, my first memories were of hearing "West Coast Eagles" a lot in the media, obviously they had one a premiership the year before and when a game was on TV I thought "Mark" was some superstar player because I kept hearing "Mark". When the TV news were on the "Fremantle Dockers" were mentioned constantly, although I didn't know the context, just hearing it said a lot - the seed was planted! My best friend and I flipped through a sticker collecting book – you would collect the stickers of the players (sometimes these rare glittering mascots for each team page - and put them into the blank spots of the number meant for the sticker of that player, etc. The players on the other teams had cool ‘action shot' photos taken during games with crowds in the background. In contrast, Freo’s photo’s were conspicuously boring - kicking the ball around a bare training ground with no fans in the background, just sand and machinery presumably building some stands. Each team had their cheer squad as the background, but because it was Fremantle’s first year their background was of a photo simply a scenic photo from Fremantle - a port with docked ships during a sunrise - it stood out from the rest. I asked my friend why the Fremantle page was different and he told me they they weren’t playing the year before, that they were a new team and so far had only played a few games and "played badly", well, its always been in my nature to go for an underdog, so I liked what I saw and heard so far. I was drawn to their humble team page in the sticker book. In the media they were made fun of for being different and were underestimated, they were clearly the outsiders.. I liked the way “Fremantle” sounded and their guernsey looked amazing. They were new, I was new to the AFL and I was new to the country. In Fremantle I had a team with characteristics I found analogous to myself and I wanted to follow them from the beginning of their time in the AFL.
I started following their games and learning the rules of the sport. They certainly looked and played different - they had an unpredictability that made the team interesting and exciting, that was clear much even then - they could make some atrocious mistakes by any standard, lose against the worst of the teams at the time; St. Kilda or Fitzroy but then knock top teams like Carlton off their perch, so I was hooked – I quickly became passionate for this team! I went at the Doctor Harry Cooper ‘Talk to the Animals’ show at the Wayville Showgrounds while I was missing the Fremantle vs Carlton game, what was being touted as the upcoming trashing of the season. I was missing the game and wanted badly to know how it was progressing, so when I saw a man decked out in his team's club gear and listening to a radio antenna headset (he was wearing Carlton merch and rightly so, they had a lot to boast about that year, no team was going to beat them). If anyone knew the live score it was that guy. I asked him and in a frustrated but bemused way he told me that Fremantle were up by quite a bit! (That’s what I remember, I may be wrong but I’m not going to check, I’m going all by memory here). He was a burly, Aussie man and I was a little kid feeling intimidated and somehow scared that my team looked like it was going to beat his; the Carlton behemoth of the era, so I remember seeming being apologetic but I remember him, if anything, seeming gracious in the imminent defeat. Following this win was the moment that people on shows like the Footy Show (which I watched for the panel's tips on the Fremantle game (always 5 minutes before the end of the show) and the lookalikes as well as a couple of other day-time shows and talkback footy radio. Everyone was eat their own words and gained a certain respect for the Dockers, and as brief as it was, Fremantle was the talk of the week (Yes! I even listened to talkback radio as a kid with 'KG and Cornsey', I was hooked on Fremantle now!)
(I will wrap this up, I promise. Now for my favourite part and which is why I wanted to share this in the first place..)
I started becoming closer with my friends and kids at school, we had a new common ground in footy and I was becoming more accepted. I pleaded with my dad to buy me that wonderful Fremantle guernsey. Those official guernseys weren’t cheap and he didn’t understand why he should spend so much money on me having it, we certainly weren’t rich. It took a lot of convincing but I was persistent! I got my Freo guernsey and was both was excited and nervous to wear it to school but I rocked up to primary school wearing my new Freo guernsey in style with a few laughs from the Crows kids and told them that I couldn't wait until we played beat them in the next meeting, which didn't happen, we got Modra though and that more than made up for it later on.
At ESL (English as a second language), my tutor had an idea. She saw me wearing my coveted new jumper, and didn’t ask why I wasn’t wearing a Crows jumper, which would have been an indirect way of saying ‘you should be supporting the Crows’, she was a smart teacher and skipped to “who is your favourite Fremantle player? Well, at the time and age I didn’t appreciate the game in the sense to really have a favourite player based on anything nuanced so I told her “Ben Allan” because he is the captain and wears my favourite number. As an English learning exercise she suggested that I write a letter to the ‘Fremantle Fan Club’ in Perth (I didn’t even know where Perth was). I wrote the letter and described a lot of what I wrote here, ie. immigrating from Europe etc and that he was my favourite player and I wanted him to play well LOL). Several months later, after I had forgotten about my letter and the first thing my year 5 home group teacher told me that morning was that my ESL teacher had a special surprise for me that day - I asked him what it was but he told me I would have to wait until my lesson to find out from her. Well, she showed me an envelope with the Fremantle Dockers emblem on it, took the letter out and asked me to read it to her. And this is what it was..
Thank you for reading
The card I sent Ben Allan came all the way back from this amazing town I had imagined but had never visited.
My dad laminated the letter at work and I've kept the card in perfect condition in the plastic box since 1995
That 1995 woolen guernsey.
With Ben Allan's '7' sown on by my mum.
I was 10 and my family and I immigrated from Europe to Australia several years earlier. I had a strong accent, we weren't wealthy and so I couldn't afford to wear the same clothes as the other kids; I felt like an outsider. All my primary school friends were into footy, so during recess and lunch time we would kick a small footy on the primary school oval; imagining four of the metal poles on the back of the school fence as goal posts, I hardly knew what I was doing or which angle to kick the ball, I do remember kicking it 90 degrees off (the long way) sometimes. On some school days, some of the kids wore their favourite team’s guernsey (my best friend was from Colac and his team was Geelong). Being in Adelaide, most of the other kids barracked the Crows. I didn’t have a team but I wanted a my own guernsey and wasn’t going to be an Adelaide Crows one - in a public Adelaide school in the 90s, being a young, foreign kid with an accent that stood out and wasn’t quite accepted at the time had its own set of problems so I didn't want to be an Adelaide supporter. I didn't know much about footy, my first memories were of hearing "West Coast Eagles" a lot in the media, obviously they had one a premiership the year before and when a game was on TV I thought "Mark" was some superstar player because I kept hearing "Mark". When the TV news were on the "Fremantle Dockers" were mentioned constantly, although I didn't know the context, just hearing it said a lot - the seed was planted! My best friend and I flipped through a sticker collecting book – you would collect the stickers of the players (sometimes these rare glittering mascots for each team page - and put them into the blank spots of the number meant for the sticker of that player, etc. The players on the other teams had cool ‘action shot' photos taken during games with crowds in the background. In contrast, Freo’s photo’s were conspicuously boring - kicking the ball around a bare training ground with no fans in the background, just sand and machinery presumably building some stands. Each team had their cheer squad as the background, but because it was Fremantle’s first year their background was of a photo simply a scenic photo from Fremantle - a port with docked ships during a sunrise - it stood out from the rest. I asked my friend why the Fremantle page was different and he told me they they weren’t playing the year before, that they were a new team and so far had only played a few games and "played badly", well, its always been in my nature to go for an underdog, so I liked what I saw and heard so far. I was drawn to their humble team page in the sticker book. In the media they were made fun of for being different and were underestimated, they were clearly the outsiders.. I liked the way “Fremantle” sounded and their guernsey looked amazing. They were new, I was new to the AFL and I was new to the country. In Fremantle I had a team with characteristics I found analogous to myself and I wanted to follow them from the beginning of their time in the AFL.
I started following their games and learning the rules of the sport. They certainly looked and played different - they had an unpredictability that made the team interesting and exciting, that was clear much even then - they could make some atrocious mistakes by any standard, lose against the worst of the teams at the time; St. Kilda or Fitzroy but then knock top teams like Carlton off their perch, so I was hooked – I quickly became passionate for this team! I went at the Doctor Harry Cooper ‘Talk to the Animals’ show at the Wayville Showgrounds while I was missing the Fremantle vs Carlton game, what was being touted as the upcoming trashing of the season. I was missing the game and wanted badly to know how it was progressing, so when I saw a man decked out in his team's club gear and listening to a radio antenna headset (he was wearing Carlton merch and rightly so, they had a lot to boast about that year, no team was going to beat them). If anyone knew the live score it was that guy. I asked him and in a frustrated but bemused way he told me that Fremantle were up by quite a bit! (That’s what I remember, I may be wrong but I’m not going to check, I’m going all by memory here). He was a burly, Aussie man and I was a little kid feeling intimidated and somehow scared that my team looked like it was going to beat his; the Carlton behemoth of the era, so I remember seeming being apologetic but I remember him, if anything, seeming gracious in the imminent defeat. Following this win was the moment that people on shows like the Footy Show (which I watched for the panel's tips on the Fremantle game (always 5 minutes before the end of the show) and the lookalikes as well as a couple of other day-time shows and talkback footy radio. Everyone was eat their own words and gained a certain respect for the Dockers, and as brief as it was, Fremantle was the talk of the week (Yes! I even listened to talkback radio as a kid with 'KG and Cornsey', I was hooked on Fremantle now!)
(I will wrap this up, I promise. Now for my favourite part and which is why I wanted to share this in the first place..)
I started becoming closer with my friends and kids at school, we had a new common ground in footy and I was becoming more accepted. I pleaded with my dad to buy me that wonderful Fremantle guernsey. Those official guernseys weren’t cheap and he didn’t understand why he should spend so much money on me having it, we certainly weren’t rich. It took a lot of convincing but I was persistent!
I got my Freo guernsey and was both was excited and nervous to wear it to school but I rocked up to primary school wearing my new Freo guernsey in style with a few laughs from the Crows kids and told them that I couldn't wait until we played beat them in the next meeting, which didn't happen, we got Modra though and that more than made up for it later on.At ESL (English as a second language), my tutor had an idea. She saw me wearing my coveted new jumper, and didn’t ask why I wasn’t wearing a Crows jumper, which would have been an indirect way of saying ‘you should be supporting the Crows’, she was a smart teacher and skipped to “who is your favourite Fremantle player? Well, at the time and age I didn’t appreciate the game in the sense to really have a favourite player based on anything nuanced so I told her “Ben Allan” because he is the captain and wears my favourite number. As an English learning exercise she suggested that I write a letter to the ‘Fremantle Fan Club’ in Perth (I didn’t even know where Perth was). I wrote the letter and described a lot of what I wrote here, ie. immigrating from Europe etc and that he was my favourite player and I wanted him to play well LOL). Several months later, after I had forgotten about my letter and the first thing my year 5 home group teacher told me that morning was that my ESL teacher had a special surprise for me that day - I asked him what it was but he told me I would have to wait until my lesson to find out from her. Well, she showed me an envelope with the Fremantle Dockers emblem on it, took the letter out and asked me to read it to her. And this is what it was..
Thank you for reading
The card I sent Ben Allan came all the way back from this amazing town I had imagined but had never visited.
My dad laminated the letter at work and I've kept the card in perfect condition in the plastic box since 1995
That 1995 woolen guernsey.
With Ben Allan's '7' sown on by my mum.
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