Inaugural Fremantle chairman Ross Kelly held a closely guarded secret as his flight from Melbourne travelled west towards Perth in mid-1994.
It was about six months after the AFL had announced a second Western Australian team would join the national competition alongside โbig brother' West Coast, and there was still much intrigue about the incoming club's nickname and colours.
โWe had chosen the nickname โDockers' and I had to go across to Melbourne to present it to the AFL Commission and get their approval,โ Kelly tells Zero Hanger's AFL Team Builders podcast.
โI was coming back on the plane and a fellow sat next to me, and it turned out he was from Army Intelligence. He asked me what I'd been doing in Melbourne and I said I was associated with the new club. He said โwhen are you going to announce the name?' and I replied โoh, we're going to try to keep it a secret for about nine weeks, before the official launch.'
โHe said โyou'll never do it โ even stuff that appears in papers in the Pentagon is known within weeks in the Kremlin.'
โBut he added, โthe way we keep things really secret is, we put out a lot of false information, so even if the right information gets out, no-one knows whether it's right.'
โSo we started a campaign, with the assistance of the AFL, and we floated all sorts of names. And it turned out within a fortnight someone rang up one of the Melbourne newspapers or radio stations and says โthe new team's name is the Dockers' and the guy answering replies โyes, I've heard that but I've heard about 950 other names' and he just discounted it.
โSo we did manage to keep the name a secret.โ
Kelly, a former WAFL footballer, had been chosen to oversee the establishment of the Fremantle team despite being an โoutsider' living in Melbourne.
Planning for the second WA-based team featured furious debates and negotiations between the WAFL's two dominant clubs at the time, East Fremantle and South Fremantle, Kelly recalls.
โThe AFL Commission, and the WA Football Commission, believed it would be disruptive to have one person from either of the clubs [East or South Fremantle] as president, so it was advantageous to be an outsider,โ he says.
โBut I still came under a great deal of criticism โ I don't think anyone in Fremantle wanted me there at all!โ
That was soon after the AFL announced on December 14, 1993, its intentions to launch a new team in Fremantle for the 1995 season.
With a nickname sorted โ despite some early objections from Levi and Strauss & Co. that manufactured Dockers' brand of clothing โ the club needed, among other things, a brand that fans could identify with. The club was determined to do things differently, which wasn't always appreciated by AFL heavyweights, recalls inaugural CEO David Hatt.
โThe AFL did say to us that they'd like us to do something different in the way we presented ourselves โฆ and we did do things that were different,โ Hatt says.
โWe had green, purple, red and white as our colours, which was a bit different but each colour meant something. The red and green were meant to illustrate the signalling flags of dockers who were guiding ships into harbour. And red, white and green were the colours of the Italian flag, and we had a whole bunch of Italian immigrants who were enthusiastic footy supporters [in Fremantle]. But we added purple as well, because no-one else had purple.
โThe feedback from the AFL was less than wonderful. I remember [league chief] Ross Oakley saying โyou can't market green and purple โ try something different.'
โI said, โI'm sorry, but green and purple are the sort of things we want because they are different. And there's this tennis club in the UK called Wimbledon, and they've marketed purple and green pretty wellโฆโ
This determination to think laterally, act differently and dream big was in part due to the huge, state-wide shadow of cross-town rivals West Coast.
The Eagles, established in 1987, had quickly become a force on and off the field and enjoyed support throughout the state, and Kelly and the Fremantle forefathers had to find a way to stand out.
โWe had to establish a club that had its own personality and was different to that of the very successful Eagles,โ Kelly recalls.
โThe Eagles had captured West Coast, they were the first team [from the state] and had positioned themselves as something for the whole of the state. But they didn't come with an inherent, particular background, so our task was to [establish ourselves] as a proper AFL club, and what we elected to do was to attempt to inherit the tradition of Fremantle. Fremantle is an iconic city. We started our own Hall of Champions, looking at the great players form the past who were at East and South Fremantle.
โWe had to differentiate our club and make it attractive to those who hadn't already signed up to the Eagles.
โOf course, then we had to put together a team.โ
The team. No story of Fremantle would be complete without exploring their initial list build, which proved a series of unfortunate events which made short-term success extremely unlikely.
Instead of the bounty of early draft picks and financial assistance granted to expansion teams in modern times, or the state-wide zone access West Coast and Brisbane could ravish for their arrivals in 1987, the Dockers were given minimal concessions.
Some mistakes were self-inflicted, but many who were involved with the club in 1994-95 are still disappointed, and even outright angry, at the lack of help from the AFL almost three decades later.
The result was an inaugural squad that included a couple of big-name recruits -- such as Hawthorn midfielder and inaugural Freo captain Ben Allan, Geelong key defender Stephen O'Reilly and emerging North Melbourne tall Peter Mann -- some seasoned journeymen, and a host of young hopefuls. In a series of sliding doors moments, Fremantle could have started its existence boasting the likes of Matthew Lloyd, Scott Lucas and Robert Harvey, among others, but recruited no genuine A-graders.
Meanwhile, West Coast's success โ winning flags in 1992 and 1994 โ meant the Purple side of town was a tough sell for locals and interstaters.
As inaugural coach Gerard Neesham recalls, the landscape made it just about impossible to build a strong squad for the early years.
โIt was probably the last of the very poor start-ups because we were given a very, very ordinary set of rules,โ he says. โWe were given a very short amount of time and had no resources.
โI think the rules were, we could take 14 uncontracted (rival AFL) players and whoever [club] we took a player from, they would get compensation of a 16-year-old for the next year's draft. So that meant the best 14 players of the following draft were gone for us [the next year].
โ[Drafting] was a pretty inexact science at that point, there was no resource to be out looking at players, assessing them, and we had no [recruiting] staff come on until the end of 1994.
โAlso, we weren't allowed to talk to any potential players in-season, we had to wait until post-season to talk to them. But I was at that stage a good mate of [long-time Essendon coach] Kevin Sheedy and he told me โdon't wait for anyone to tell you when you can start talking to them โ talk to them straight away!' It was typical โSheeds'.
โBut we did meet a lot of [potential recruits] โ Robert Harvey, Stephen Tingay, Darryl White, Paul Roos, Andrew McKay from memory, who were all wonderful, established players. But we didn't get any of them โ hardly any first-choice players would come. We had to take whoever we could get to make up the numbers โ the clubs offered us players who weren't in the top echelon. We were happy to take them, they were really good blokes and great foot soldiers โฆ but that was the reality back then.โ
Hatt too looks back ruefully at the Dockers' list build.
โWe had a couple of problems; one was that Western Australia had been bled bare, if you like, by other AFL clubs and certainly West Coast, who had taken the pick of the crop,โ he says.
โThen there was the fact we were only allowed to get players who were out of contract at their AFL club and then if that club lost a player, they'd receive a form of priority draft pick the following year.
โSo Essendon actually had three or four players that wanted to come (Tony Delaney, Todd Ridley, Kickett and Russell Williams); I thought that was extremely generous. We were wanting to draft Scott Lucas and Matthew Lloyd, the legendary key forwards, but we couldn't get access to them because we'd taken some lower-level Essendon players and the AFL said โoh well, Essendon get the priority picks'.
โThat was repeated with a number of clubs; it was very, very difficult.โ
Even the Dockers' eventual No. 1 draft pick in 1995, Clive Waterhouse, wasn't the standout youngster in his draft year as Kelly remembers: โClive was effectively No.15 because 14 other draft choices had been plucked off before they even entered the draft!โ
Despite the obvious list holes, excitement was still high as the Dockers entered their first pre-season ahead of the 1995 season.
Much like the club's boundary-pushing off-field mindset, Neesham was picked as much due to his commitment to flair and innovation as his uber-successful WAFL coaching career with Claremont which netted four premierships from six grand finals.
His unique 'chip and draw,' possession-based game plan drew from similar counter-attacking principles in sports like hockey, soccer, basketball and water polo.
Neesham had Fremantle sporting pedigree in his blood and jumped at the chance to coach the start-up club in his home town.
โI was seriously excited at the prospect, but probably pretty naรฏve โ if I wanted to stay coaching for a long period of time, I'd never have been the first coach of a start-up because that really puts an end to your career,โ he says.
โBut the excitement of being the inaugural coach of Fremantle far outweighed whether it would be a good career move.โ
A lack of decent training facilities hamstrung Neesham's first pre-season in charge, with the young coach struggling to fully embed his unique game plan in his players' minds.
โThe guys who had been under me at Claremont picked it up really quickly, because they already had it [knowledge of the game-plan],โ he says.
โBut the guys who were new needed more time, and they weren't capable of understanding it to the detail I required, but they did all try to embrace it โ taking possession in the backline, changing direction, counter-attacking, things that are now standard.โ
An arduous summer on the track behind them, the AFL's newest took on Richmond at the MCG for their debut contest on April Fool's Day, 1995. With only 12 players boasting AFL experience -- none of whom had played more than 100 games -- the Dockers tried to capitalise on their never-before-seen (at AFL level, anyway) gameplan but found themselves down by 30 points early in the fourth quarter. They stormed back in the last stanza before falling short by five points in an impressive first outing.
The performance was encouraging, with the fast-paced, counter-attacking game style catching many teams off guard. But, rival clubs soon studied them and worked out ways to counter the Dockers' game plan, and as winter hit and the injuries piled up, Fremantle nosedived from a respectable 5-5 start to lose their next seven games in finishing 13th out of 15 clubs.
It was the first of many unsuccessful seasons, in terms of ladder positions, for the Dockers, with the league's newest team having to wait until their ninth season to play finals.
While they are still striving for a maiden premiership, those involved with the Fremantle build look back with fondness for the hurdles they overcame to establish a passionate club that dares to do things differently.
For the full story of how the Dockers came to be, watch the Team Builders podcast, which goes into further detail in areas such as:
- How close the Dockers came to signing St Kilda superstars Robert Harvey, Stewart Loewe and possibly Nicky Winmar, who were โmore than available and wanted a change,โ according to Hatt
- More early draft and trade blunders Neesham having to scour a makeshift training oval for broken glass during the initial pre-season
- The battle with West Coast for the hearts and minds of Western Australian football fans
- Struggling with the lack of facilities and commercial opportunities
- How Neesham tried to evolve his unique game plan, and wanted to recruit more Aboriginal players
- Why the colour purple is so revered by those at Fremantle.
