STEVEN Browne's goal for Carlton just as the siren rang for three-quarter time yesterday to reduce a 10-point deficit to just four would have been critical against any opponent. Against Fremantle, it was as good as a match-winner.
Until then, it was the Blues whose confidence was sapped, watching their lead eroded by a six-goal third-quarter burst by the Dockers.
Browne's straight shot on the run restored some equilibrium. But it also sent Carlton to the final break only a kick from the lead. And in that huddle, coach Brett Ratten wouldn't have needed to tell his players how poor are their opponents in final quarters.
And thus it happened to Fremantle again. A potential match-winning lead turned to dust in yet another insipid final term. The Dockers have lost their past four games by a total of just 19 points. You could feel sorry for them if you knew just the scorelines and nothing else.
Like the fact the Dockers let slip a 41-point lead against Geelong in round six, a 51-point lead against Melbourne the week after, a three-goal edge with just 10 minutes to play last week against the Western Bulldogs. Surely, that was going to bring out a bit of resilience yesterday. No. Not with this bunch.
That makes it 143 points by which Fremantle has been outscored in final quarters this season. That's almost 24 goals. That's pathetic.
Even Matthew Pavlich's fourth goal of the game four minutes into the final term to make the margin 10 points again couldn't rally a side that truly has forgotten how to win. Once Andrew Carrazzo dobbed one on the run for the Blues, you sensed exactly what was about to unfold.
As, on cue, it did. A couple of minutes after Carrazzo had put Carlton within a kick, Nick Stevens put the Blues in front. Then with the ball bobbling around dangerously inside the forward 50, Bryce Gibbs slipped under a tackle and looped a handball over the top for Stevens to run into an open goal, nary a Docker in sight.
Then surfaced once more Fremantle's remarkable ability to shoot itself in the foot, an illness which can strike even the likes of skipper Pavlich. Having marked just 20 metres out dead in front, he hit the post. For a team whose confidence was already dangerously fragile, that was akin to the executioner pulling the trap door on the hanging platform.
The final cruel irony for the Dockers came with the final goal of a game littered with too many examples of poor decision-making. Darren Pfeiffer was a late inclusion for Bret Thornton, whose absence was supposed to have left an already vulnerable Carlton backline even more exposed. Instead, the Blues coped just fine, and Pfeiffer bobbed up with two goals, the second the final nail in the Fremantle coffin.
For the Blues, it wasn't all about the usual suspects yesterday, skipper Chris Judd was just fair and Brendan Fevola held to one goal and beaten by Luke McPharlin. Stevens, opposed to Docker veteran Peter Bell, was one who fired, and was great value in the second and final terms, dragged out of play to Carlton's cost for much of the third term.
But Adam Bentick was more than handy for the Blues, finishing with 31 disposals, Shaun Grigg had 22, and Setanta O'hAilpin did a pretty solid job on Pavlich despite the Freo star's eventual four-goal haul.
Fremantle, in contrast, seemed to struggle to find sufficient motivation when it should have been jumping out of its skin following the near-thing losses of the past few weeks.
Things couldn't have started any better for the Dockers when Pavlich and O'hAilpin staged a pre-game jostle, the Docker champion went to ground and won a free kick, then a 50-metre penalty for good measure.
They went goal for goal for much of the first quarter, finished the second on a bit of a roll, and should pretty much have blown the game away in the third, when they dominated the middle part of the term, even the likes of the much-maligned Kepler Bradley stepping up, his beating of two opponents, sidestep of Judd then accurate shot on the run arguably the best single passage of his much-discussed 51-game AFL career.
But this is the Dockers we're talking about. And not for the first time, while the young and raw likes of Garrick Ibbotson and Rhys Palmer could hold their heads high after yet another final-term debacle, many far more senior teammates should be embarrassed by their lack of resilience.
It's Port Adelaide the Dockers take on at home next week. They
should be even more fired up. But unless they're 12 goals up at the
final change, don't even think about a change of script.
FREMANTLE 3.1 7.1 13.1 14.4 (88)
GOALS: Carlton: Fisher 2, Betts 2, Scotland 2, Fevola, Browne, Edwards, Wiggins, Simpson, Carrazzo, Stevens, Pfeiffer. Fremantle: Pavlich 4, Tarrant 3, Farmer 2, Bell, Duffield, Solomon, Michael Johnson, Bradley.
BEST: Carlton: Stevens, Bentick, Betts, Simpson, Waite. Fremantle: Pavlich, Ibbotson, Palmer, McPharlin, Tarrant.
INJURIES: Fremantle: Dodd (calf). Carlton: Thornton (knee) replaced in selected side by Pfeiffer.
UMPIRES M Ellis, G Fila, S Meredith.
CROWD 28,955 at Telstra Dome.
THE UPSHOT
Carlton should really have sealed the game in the first half,
but for clumsy disposal and Fremantle's accurate kicking. The
Dockers capitalised on their opponents' weaknesses to take the lead
in the third but, in a plot that is becoming all too familiar for
the boys from the west, they were over-run in the final term.
TALKING POINT
There will be 15 AFL clubs with a note hanging in their rooms
this week saying "If Freo leads at three-quarter time, DON'T
PANIC". One, on the other hand, may need reminding that there are
four quarters in a game of footy.
HOT AND COLD
Nick Stevens was tearing it apart yesterday, holding Peter
Bell well, gathering 28 touches of his own and kicking the goal
that put the Blues in front in the final quarter. Brendan Fevola,
however, left his kicking boots at home. He kicked 1.2 and fumbled
a number of marks that he would normally gobble up.
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