Western derby 61: Why Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles' clash will be as hot as any other
Saturday's contest between Fremantle and West Coast will be as hot as any before it.
The Dockers are the AFL's high-flying bolters. The club has played finals just twice since 2015 and their fans have endured a long and brutal wait to be back towards the top.
Now they're climbing the ladder with a rush.
Sunday's famous win over top-of-the-ladder Collingwood, where they turned around a 22-point margin to win by one, was one of the best in the club's history and was a shot in the arm for their hopes of playing finals for the first time since 2022.
Now they enter the derby cauldron.
West Coast are languishing at the bottom of the ladder and a staring down the barrel of the third wooden spoon in the club's history.
They won't play finals this season, but what they can do is spoil Fremantle's party.
Don't think it's possible? You only have to look as far as round six last season.
It was young gun Harley Reid's third game in West Coast colours. The Dockers were highly-fancied to play finals and had started the season with three straight wins before two close losses to Carlton and Port Adelaide.
They appeared to be as far ahead of the Eagles as they ever have been. Then they got ambushed.
Reid had 19 touches, flew to take big marks and booted three goals that brough the house down. Elliot Yeo had 26 disposals and won the Glendinning-Allen Medal, Tim Kelly had 24 and Jake Waterman kicked five goals.
It still stands as the Eagles' best performance since the start of 2022.
'You want to be the best team in WA out of the two. We haven't been that this year, they've had a good year, they're pushing to play finals and we're obviously not,' Eagles defender Tom Cole told The West Australian.
'We want to cause an upset. We want to win every week but the derbies do have a little more in them as much as some boys say they don't. I used to think that in the early days, but there's definitely a little bit more in them.
'When we were going really well many years ago and Freo weren't going so well there was always a bit more in those derbies. And they caused a few upsets back in the day when we were on a bit of a roll. Hopefully we can put a good performance in this week.'
Dockers defender Bailey Banfield even said his side were on high-alert for another Eagles surprise.
'We love a derby,' he said on SEN.
'Everybody internally always gets pumped up. You can't take anything for granted in a derby. We probably did that last year, and we got jumped, so nobody's taking them easily this year.'
This clash between the two fierce rivals comes with the backdrop of Reid closing in on a mega contract extension that would be the richest deal in the history of the sport and will be critical to the Dockers' hopes of busting their finals drought.
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