Possible Sound Of Violence

We’re obviously in a much tidier position from a wider context, so why all morning have I had Hello Darkness My Old Friend stuck in my head? And fittingly, it’s not Simon and Garfunkel’s original but the cover performed by Disturbed!

The truth is we’ve seen these movies and read the books many times before. Today we’re potentially getting a reminiscing glimpse into our past.

Did we mistakenly and complacently believe those days were over? Did we think we’d evolved to beyond the time where opponents could “get a hold of us”?

Yes, we got snippets of it against GWS, the Bulldogs and Carlton but, we didn’t know at the time so we couldn’t indulge the experience.

At the MCG today, according to the bookies, there is a better than 94% chance we may get to knowingly take a trip back in time to the “good old days.” And, to be worryingly honest, there’s a chance our entire existence may flash before our very eyes. It may be Hello Darkness My Old Friend now but Hello From The Other Side later this afternoon!

For those of us who have been here since 1994, never missed a game, never left or turned the tv off early, we have an engrained strength to draw on. We have coping credits in the bank.

It’s the younger ones that we need to get around. The fans that weren’t around in “those particular days”. The ones that missed eras that grounded us, in more ways than one. Those impossible to forget times when we took on unthinkable casualties in the wars of which the ‘Drums’ were ironically beating.

But the overriding truth is, despite the imminently ominous almost unfathomable battle against an all-powerful Collingwood at the Colosseum, our many former intimate relationships with the underdog status brings us a certain level of calm.

We’re not orphans to what we’re about to face and what may unfold. The shackles are off, the pressure and weight of expectation is not existent. We’re going in purely on hope and with realistic and rational mindset. How we come out the other end is another thing but... let’s not go there right now.

When you weigh it all up it leaves you with the one masochistic question, the answer of which we have often sort refuge in.

If you don’t have that familiar and weird, almost perversely comforting impending feeling of dread, are you really even a true Freo fan?

Now if you’ll join us, kneel down and let us pray...