Affiliated: AFL 1995-present

Club Address: Level One, Wesley Way, 16 Market Street, Fremantle 6160 

Postal Address: P.O. Box 381, Fremantle 6160

Home Ground: Subiaco Oval

Formed: 1994

Colours: Purple, white, red and green

Emblem: Dockers

AFL Premierships: Nil  (Highest position: 4th in 2006)

Brownlow Medallists: Nil

AFL All Australians: Matthew Pavlich 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008; Peter Bell 2003; Paul Hasleby 2003; Aaron Sandilands 2008 (9 total)

Fremantle's 'Hall of Legends': Click here

Highest Score: 28.12 (180) vs. Collingwood 10.8 (68) at Subiaco Oval in round 7 2005 

Most Games: 238 by Shane Parker 1995-2007 (correct to the start of the 2009 season)

Record Home Attendance (Home and Away Rounds): 42,213 at Subiaco Oval in round 6 2006: Fremantle 12.16 (88); West Coast 12.11 (83)

Record Finals Attendance: 42,770 for the 1st elimination final on 5 September 2003 at Subiaco Oval: Essendon 15.11 (101); Fremantle 8.9 (57)

Overall Success Rate 1995-2008: 39.7%

Without the draft concessions enjoyed by their near neighbours West Coast almost a decade before, Fremantle's early years in the 'big time' proved to be significantly less auspicious, and overall it would probably be fair to suggest that they have not yet been able to do justice to the rich traditions of Fremantle football as exemplified over the years by 'Old Easts' (later the Sharks) and the red and whites (latterly the Bulldogs). Indeed, had a merged East and South Fremantle been able to participate in the VFL at almost any time since its inception there is little doubt that premiership cups would have been heading west across the Nullarbor well before the Eagles' eventual breakthrough in 1992.

Hypotheses aside, however, the story of football in Fremantle dates back at least as far as1868, when a match is recorded as taking place between the Town of Fremantle and the Western Australian Temperance and Recreation Society.  Although there is no record as to the type of football played on this occasion, it can be reliably assumed that it was not the game known at the time as 'Victorian Rules'.  Indeed, for most of the first two decades during which organised football is known to have been played in the Perth-Fremantle area it was the English game of rugby that was favoured, with the indigenous code only gradually, indeed almost imperceptibly, finding favour.

By 1882 a total of five clubs in the Perth-Fremantle region were acknowledged as having senior status, and of these only one club, Unions, preferred the Australian, or 'bouncing', game.  However, when the Western Australian Football Association was formed only three years later, its member clubs all agreed that matches should be played according to the Victorian-orientated rules of the Adelaide and Suburban Football Association, with just a few minor modifications being agreed to address local conditions.  It appears that, during the intervening time, press and public dissatisfaction with the rugby code as a spectacle had mounted, while the number of influential individuals involved in the various football clubs who openly favoured Victorian Rules had risen rapidly.  One such individual was the inaugural captain of the Fremantle Football Club, Bill Bateman, who had been to school at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide, "one of the cradles of the Australian game" (see footnote 1).

The first WAFA premiership was initially contested by four clubs: Rovers (precursors of the Perth Football Club), Victorians and Perth High School, all of which were Perth-based, plus Fremantle.  However, Perth High School withdrew after only a couple of matches.

In 1886, a second Fremantle-based side, Unions, brought the number of clubs in the competition back to four.  Bateman's Fremantle swept all before it this year, winning all 7 matches contested, most by huge margins.  At season's end a representative game was arranged between 'Combined Perth' and 'Combined Fremantle', with the former winning 2.3 to 1.9 (behinds not counting in the score at this stage, of course).  Such 'test matches', as they later became known, would, during the pre-World War One period of the twentieth century, become an important feature in each year's Western Australian football calendar.

In 1887, for reasons which remain unclear, the all conquering Fremantle side went into mothballs, leaving Unions as the port settlement's sole standard bearers.  Three years later, Unions decided to adopt the same name as their predecessors, "because of the district" (see footnote 2).  By this stage the club was, by some measure, the competition's strongest, winning flags in 1888 and 1889 as Unions, and again in 1890 as Fremantle.  It would almost certainly have made it four in a row in 1891 had it not been for a rather untoward sequence of events.  Football by this stage was being marred by acts of premeditated violence, both on and off the field of play, and was losing popularity as a result, as well as attracting the same kind of press criticism that rugby had had to endure in the 1880s.  Things really came to a head during the 1891 season when, with Fremantle unbeaten and seemingly comfortably on course to retain the premiership, Rovers threw a controversial and ultimately disabling spanner into the works, downing the ladder leaders 1.3 to 0.7 after the umpire, Mr. Croft - a former Rovers player, no less - had repeatedly appeared to favour them.  The match was played in Fremantle and, perhaps predictably, the majority of the spectators were far from overjoyed: 

The game between Rovers and Fremantle at Fremantle Park witnessed one of the most disorderly scenes that have ever occurred on the football field in this colony, and but for the presence of Constable Bonner, who was on mounted duty on the ground, serious injury would have been inflicted on the umpire, Mr. Croft.

As soon as the game had ended, a disorderly mob of larrikins, including many elderly men, surrounded the pavilion and asserted that the umpire had behaved with partiality and harshness towards the Fremantle team and had been unusually liberal towards the Rovers.

They yelled and shouted for the umpire, the din at times being deafening, and as each member of the Rovers came down the stairs he was hooted and hustled by the large crowd.

The president of the association, Mr. James, appeared (he was wearing a Rovers cap) and was mobbed.

The umpire next made his appearance and this was the signal for a general rush towards him, someone on the pavilion throwing a bucket of water on him as he emerged from the stairs.

The leaders of the crowd then threw him against the wall and a general rush was attempted to stem the onslaught.

Matters were beginning to look serious when Constable Bonner charged the mob, but his efforts at first were unsuccessful.  Knox, Wehrstedt and Bateman, members of the Fremantle club, got beside Mr. Croft and at great risk succeeded in holding back some of the more impetuous spirits.

The umpire got away from the wall while mounted troopers held the crowd back.  In this way, Mr. Croft got out of the Park, followed by the yells and jeers and sarcastic comments of the barrackers.

The mob, seeing that the Fremantle footballers were discouraging the hostile exhibition, gradually desisted from their unseemly behaviour.   (See footnote 3)

The defeat in itself was by no means disastrous, and when Fremantle duly won its next 2 matches to consolidate its position at the head of the ladder there appeared to be no reason why expectations of a fourth consecutive premiership should not be realised.  However, irritation still rankled among the club's officials and players, and it was decided that, as a protest, the club's final 3 games of the season should be forfeited.  It is not clear precisely what the players and officials felt might be gained by this move, but intense feelings and logical actions rarely go hand in hand; the upshot was that Fremantle plummeted to 3rd place on the ladder, with arch rivals Rovers being handed the flag.  The reaction of umpire Croft is not known, but might readily be imagined.

Australia during the 1890s underwent its worst economic depression to date, with many inhabitants of the eastern states heading west in pursuit of fortune on the goldfields of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie.  Inevitably, some of these itinerants were footballers, and when the search for gold proved fruitless, as it did for many, a fair number of them gravitated further west, to the coastal settlements of Perth and Fremantle.  One gratifying consequence of this was that the standard of football being played in the WAFA improved, while there was also a corresponding decline in on field violence.  Perhaps the most famous eastern state footballer to head west was Albert Thurgood of Essendon, who was arguably the finest player of his era.  Known as 'Albert the Great', Thurgood spent three and a bit seasons at Fremantle, topping the Association goal kicking list in 1895 (53 goals), 1896 (57) and 1897 (27).  Other prominent eastern states footballers such as Tom Wilson (ex North Melbourne), Dave 'Dolly' Christy (ex Melbourne), and the former South Melbourne pair of Harry Duggan and Dug Irvine made Fremantle the dominant team in the colony, and arguably the whole of Australia, for much of the 1890s.  Between 1892 and 1896 the side won five successive flags and managed an overall success rate of 78.9%.  It won again in 1898, but economic problems which had been simmering for some time came to a head the following season, which proved to be the club's last.  In addition, several of Fremantle's more noteworthy players, including Wilson and Christy, had been founder members in 1898 of a new club based at the port, East Fremantle, which in due course would take over Fremantle's status as the leading team in the colony.

East Fremantle broke through for its first premiership in 1900, a season which also saw South Fremantle admitted to the competition, as well as the resumption of 'test' matches between Combined Fremantle and Combined Perth representative sides.  Combined Fremantle emerged triumphant on this occasion by the substantial margin for the time of 55 points, 12.12 (84) to 3.11 (29) (see footnote 4).  

Besides these 'test' matches, the Fremantle sides would join together on at least one further occasion.  While the 1924 Hobart Carnival was taking place, the North Adelaide and Essendon Football Clubs visited Western Australia, and East Fremantle and South Fremantle combined forces to meet them.  Against a weak North Adelaide side which would eventually finish 6th in the SANFL the Fremantle combination scored a narrow win, but reigning VFL premiers Essendon proved much too strong.  Despite inaccuracy in front of goal, the 'Same Old' won by 49 points.

Following the admission to the WAFA of North Fremantle in 1901, 50% of the clubs in the competition were located at the port.  Playing initially in red, white and blue, and later in black and white, the northerners enjoyed only minimal success during their fifteen season tenure at the top level.  East Fremantle and South Fremantle, however, would go on to forge one of the greatest and most intense rivalries in Australian sport; known as 'Fremantle Derbies', their confrontations frequently produced the competition's highest attendances for the year, not to mention some of the best - and most bruising - football.  The all time record attendance for a football match in Western Australia was set at the Fremantle Derby grand final of 1979, when 52,781 spectators turned up.  This was just one of ten premiership-deciding matches between the clubs during the course of the twentieth century (see footnote 5).

Action from a Fremantle Derby match at Fremantle Oval in 1910.  East Fremantle won on this occasion, 8.11 (59) to South Fremantle's 1.8 (14).  Both sides shared Fremantle Oval at this time.

In the period between Australia's emergence into nationhood in 1901 and the onset of World War One thirteen years later, Australian football had probably its best opportunity ever to transcend the straitjackets of parochialism and self interest which have stymied its development for much of its history.  The spirit of nationalism which swept the country had a pronounced and legible effect on most sports, including football, where, for an all too brief time, there was a general and genuine desire to look beyond state boundaries and interpret the game in a national context.  Alongside a fruitful and generally altruistic cross-fertilisation of ideas, the comparative lack of restrictions over player movement meant that the spread of talent between the three major football states was, by 1910 or '11, more even than it had ever been before, or would ever subsequently be.  

Interstate tours by clubs became a regular feature of the football calendar during this period, as players and officials sought to affirm their own and their club's identities and significance within a national framework, whilst simultaneously fuelling their nascent sense of patriotism by means of the establishment of links with fellow countrymen in other parts of the vast, enthralling landscape that they were gradually learning to think of as 'home'.  Visits to Western Australia by club sides from South Australia and Victoria were eagerly anticipated during this period, and matches against these teams often attracted attendances in excess of those for WANFL finals matches.

In 1909, as reigning League and state premiers, the East Fremantle Football Club undertook its first interstate tour, visiting Broken Hill, where two matches were played, and Melbourne for a game against a VFL combination.  The series in Broken Hill was squared, with many of the East Fremantle players expressing disquiet over the standard of the umpiring, but in Melbourne the side truly showed its pedigree, losing only narrowly (10.12 to 12.8) against a team containing a proliferation of household names (see footnote 6).

Of course, the travelling was not all in one direction.  In 1910, a Port Adelaide team described by East Fremantle legend Dolph Heinrichs half a century later as "the best club 18 that has visited WA" (see footnote 7) attracted huge interest when it journeyed across the Nullarbor.  As reigning premiers, East Fremantle was given the honour of challenging the visitors, and after a splendid match went under by just 12 points.  Some idea of just how good a performance this was can be gauged from the fact that, at Fremantle Oval a few days later, Port Adelaide overcame a virtual state side by 5 points in a game that yielded a record gate for Australian football in Western Australia up to that point.

The 1910 season also saw South Fremantle venturing interstate for the first time and sustaining a narrow loss against Fitzroy in the only game played.  Two years later, it was East Fremantle's turn to visit Victoria and take on both the Maroons and the Melbourne weather, the latter of which was at its uncongenial worst; needless to say, the match was lost, as was a game against West Torrens at the Adelaide Oval.  Such interstate tours had less to do with winning games than winning friends, however, as well as reinforcing loyalty and camaraderie within the club.  The links established between East Fremantle and Port Adelaide over the years, for instance, might be said to have contributed in no small measure to the rare, indeed almost unique, mutual rapport and respect which currently exists at AFL level between the Dockers and the Power (see footnote 8).

The 1912 season saw all three Fremantle teams participating in the finals for only the second (and, ultimately the last) time, but it was Subiaco which lifted the flag.  Up to this point, East Fremantle, with premierships in 1900, 1902-3-4, 1906, and 1908-9-10-11 had been by some measure 'cock-o-the-port', a status that was emphasised with a 5.13 (43) to 3.6 (24) challenge final defeat of the Maroons in 1914.  South Fremantle's moment was coming, however.  In 1916 and 1917 the red and whites won consecutive flags, the taste of victory being rendered all the sweeter by virtue of the fact that the grand final opposition on both occasions was provided by their local rivals.

South Fremantle was also the first of the two clubs to provide a Sandover Medallist, with centreman Jack Rocchi taking the honours in 1928.  By this stage, however, Old Easts had comprehensively re-established themselves as Western Australia's premier team, with players like Lin Richards, 'Bub' Jarvis, 'Dinny' Coffey and Clarrie Reynolds propelling them to four successive flags between 1928 and 1931.  The blue and whites won further pennants in 1933 and 1937, and were the dominant force in Western Australian football in the immediate post-World War Two phase.  Indeed, East Fremantle's 1946 side was the only club in any of the three major football states ever to go through an entire post-war season unbeaten, although West Perth, with 4 and 6 point losses in the finals, came fairly close to upsetting the proverbial apple cart.

Between 1947 and 1954 it was South Fremantle's turn to dominate, and rarely can a team have done so with such consummate and unremitting energy, vigour and style; the red and whites won premierships in 1947 and '48, 1950, and from 1952 to 1954, besides finishing runners up (by 3 points) to West Perth in 1951.  During this period the club gained an Australia-wide reputation for excellence, with Collingwood coach Phonse Kyne declaring, after watching his side lower its colours to the red and whites:

"We all know South Fremantle would hold their own in Victorian football.  They......have some mighty fine players and have nothing to learn about system, pace and kicking - the main requirements of a first-class side."  (See footnote 9)

Prominent among these "mighty fine players" were livewire rover Steve Marsh, indestructible defender Frank 'Scranno' Jenkins, evergreen ruckman Jack 'Corp' Reilly, Bradmanesque full forward Bernie Naylor, and deceptively casual, but highly effective, half back flanker Frank Treasure.

East Fremantle's record of at least one premiership in every decade of the club's existence continued with flags in 1965, 1974, 1979, 1985, 1992 and 1994.  South Fremantle meanwhile proved somewhat less successful, even succumbing to the indignity of the wooden spoon on several occasions.  However, it did also prove successful in winning three further flags before the turn of the century, in 1970, 1980 and 1997.  By the time of the last of these successes, though, neither South Fremantle or their century long rivals could any longer lay claim to being Fremantle's premier side, and within a couple of years there were even rumours that the unthinkable was being contemplated: a Bulldogs-Sharks merger.

The emergence on the scene of the Fremantle Dockers had, to a certain extent, already effected, if not quite a merger, then at least a unification of purpose, together with a heightened sense of shared traditions and values.  The Dockers, from the start, were keen to enmesh themselves in the fabric of local football history by, for example, the establishment in 1995 of a 'Hall of Legends' which recognised and celebrated the contributions made to football in Fremantle by a range of former East Fremantle and South Fremantle identities.  The inaugural inductees were East Fremantle's Jack Clarke, George Doig and Jack Sheedy, and the South Fremantle trio of Clive Lewington, Steve Marsh and Stephen Michael.  New additions to the 'Hall of Legends' have continued to be made since each year.

Speculation as to 'what might have been' is a notoriously idle pastime, but had a combined Fremantle side been able to participate in some kind of national football competition at virtually any time during the twentieth century, it is hard to resist the belief that it would have been extremely successful.  Take a look, for example, at this hypothetical 'best of' combination, which is probably only one of several of more or less equivalent standard that could have been selected from the exhaustive range of talent available:

All Time Great Pre-Dockers Fremantle Team

(All images are clickable.)

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Footnotes

1.  The Footballers by Geoff Christian, page 6.  Return to Main Text

2.  Ibid, page 10.  Return to Main Text

3.  Ibid, page 12.  This is an allegedly contemporary report of the incident.  However, the source is unspecified.  Return to Main Text

4.  Behinds had been counted in the score in Western Australia from 1898, one season after the innovation was first introduced in Victoria and South Australia.  Return to Main Text

5.  The complete list is as follows:

Note: In 1900, East Fremantle won the premiership, with South Fremantle second.  However, no finals matches were played, as the premiership at this time was still awarded to the team with the best overall record during the home and away season.  Return to Main Text

6.  These included: Jim Sharp of Fitzroy, who was renowned as the finest defender in the VFL; Collingwood's champion full forward, Walter 'Dick' Lee, who had topped the VFL goal kicking list in each of the previous 3 seasons, and would go on to do so in total on 10 occasions (including 1 shared); brilliant Carlton centreman Rod McGregor; and Melbourne's dashing forward Vince Couttie.  Return to Main Text

7.  Celebrating 100 Years of Tradition by Jack Lee, page 65.  Port Adelaide would later defeat Collingwood for the club championship of Australia, highlighting the evenness of standard in the game at the top level at this time.  Return to Main Text

8.  East Fremantle and Port Adelaide continued to meet one another fairly frequently until the 1950s.  Return to Main Text

9.  The South Fremantle Story 1900-1975 Volume 1 by Frank Harrison and Jack Lee, page 81.  Return to Main Text

10.  The South Fremantle Story 1900-1975 Volume 2 by Frank Harrison and Jack Lee, page 11.  Return to Main Text

11.  The award was further devalued by virtue of the fact that, for South Australia and Western Australia, the rules governing player selection varied depending on which state was providing the opposition.  Return to Main Text

12.  Lee, op cit., page 177.  Return to Main Text

13.  The South Fremantle Story 1900-1975 Volume 2 by Frank Harrison and Jack Lee, page 139.  Return to Main Text

14.  Lee, op cit., page 131.  Return to Main Text

15.  High Mark edited by Jack Pollard, page 68.  Return to Main Text

16.  Football Greats of Western Australia Volume One by Anthony James, page 62.  Return to Main Text

17.  Lee, op cit, page 219.  Return to Main Text

18.  James, op cit., page 48.  Return to Main Text

19.  Lee, op cit., page 194.  Return to Main Text

20.  Ibid., page 227.  Return to Main Text

21.  James, op cit., page 20.  Return to Main Text

22.  The South Fremantle Story 1900-1975 Volume 2 by Frank Harrison and Jack Lee, page 136.  Return to Main Text

23.  The Encyclopedia of League Footballers by Jim Main and Russell Holmesby, page 436.  Return to Main Text

24.  The South Fremantle Story 1900-1975 Volume 2 by Frank Harrison and Jack Lee, page 115.  Return to Main Text

25.  Ibid., pages 115 and 119.  Return to Main Text

26.  Christian, op cit., page 16.  Return to Main Text

27.  Jack Lee, op cit., page 45.  Return to Main Text

28.  The Royals 1906-1976 by Matthew Glossop, page 24.  Return to Main Text

29.  Diehards 1896-1945 by Ken Spillman, pages 53-4.  Return to Main Text