This week the whole State of Western Australia will come to a stand-still at about 5:40 pm on Saturday night when Fremantle and West Coast are booked to belt the crap out of eachother for three hours.

Fremantle start favourites but this game is far from a sure thing because both teams leave nothing spared when they take eachother on. In addition, apart from West Coast's dissappointing effort last week, an argument could be made that their form had been better than the Freo boys. A win in Victoria, narrow losses to top teams Port and Essendon and a victory over the reigning premiers is hardly shabby form. In contrast, the Dockers have hit the right opponents at the right times, beating lowly Carlton, Adelaide, Geelong and Collingwood. In addition, the Dockers never looked like winning against the only top team played so far, Sydney.

Despite all this of course, things look good for Freo. The Eagles have lost Michael Gardiner for the year who was practically the only the thing in the spine worth talking about. The remaining Trent Carroll, Quinten Lynch, Dean Cox, Darren Glass and Gwen Slapovich (whose comments about the 2000 'demolition derby' highlight how much of goose this bloke really is) hardly strikes fear into even the worst of teams. Obviously, the Eagle's strength is their midfield, and Judd, Cousins, Kerr and Embley will have to collectively kick 20 goals for them to have any hope of victory.

The Dockers bring back Roger Hayden and Troy Longmuir to the team that accounted for Geelong. Hayden will do his usual job on Phil Matera (now known as Kill Phil thanks to the famous shirts), and Troy Longmuir has been brought back for Clive Waterhouse whose derby heroics will be sorely missed. Here's hoping he can be there for the next derby later in the year.

All around the ground the Dockers have the answers and should win in a ferocious contest.

Bring on the toast, Dockers by 25 points.

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