The day started at 10.30am in WA and at 7pm Sunday evening when it finished, we were flat as tacks and emotionally exhausted. Time to Restump Podcast the season ending loss to Power from Port.

We were doing the finals hokey pokey all day! We had one foot in, we had one foot out! As Fremantle fans we’re well acclimatized to the seasonal emotional roller coaster, heck we even handle it for 80 consecutive minutes at times… but enduring eight hours on the mental anguish causing metaphoric carnival ride, well that was a new bag.

Quite frankly the game mirrored our season. We’re good, but we’re just not that good yet. We’re good, but we can’t be good enough for long enough yet.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t handle the pressure Port consistently applied. The relentless pressure caused us to fumble and double grab everything and it led to perceived pressure which saw us unable to be clean in uncontested situations. We missed simple handballs, simple kicks, simple shots on goal.

Three or four times we saw highly damaging two goal turnarounds. We saw no forward pressure. We went -4 in the first quarter and -5 in the 3rd quarter for tackles inside fifty. It ended up 17 to 9 in Port’s favour.

We saw silly undisciplined acts from Jordan Clark and Liam Reidy that both led to simple Port Adelaide goals. When you’ve previously lost six games by 13 points or less, we should know better!

But all those factors are part of the make up of why we’re not that good yet.

However, as disheartening as it was to let slip an opportunity that was there for the taking, there is a reluctant comfort there for the taking as well. We’re seriously close to challenging. For rounds 22, 23 and 24 there was no Alex Pearce, no Michael Walters, no Sean Darcy and probably most detrimentally no Josh Treacy. Yet in those games we pushed and had chances to beat Geelong, GWS and Port Adelaide, three of the top final four sides. I’m happy to repeat my belief, we’re very close!

But as we all know, being very close doesn’t feed the Bulldog. Getting it done does and we simply couldn’t. It hurts like a bugger right now and will do as we watch the September action from the sidelines.

But we tidy up a few things, maybe go shopping for a gun or two, come back a year older, a year more experienced and with another pre-season under the collective belt and half those narrow losses might be top four propelling wins.

While I’m sure he’d trade it for 8th place on the ladder, Marshy Skates got out of Sunday with the $50 spend at 2 Brothers Foods, taking out the season finale of the Mi Casa Property Boutique metres gained competition.

We’ve only scratched the surface of our healing, so there is much more to work through on the pod. Let’s work collectively on our grief, our pain and our anguish. There are questions to be asked, tough calls to be made and break throughs to be had. So, let’s all pull up a purple couch, lay back and let the therapeutic conversational healing begin.

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