WE dived into the Herald archives this week to chart the history of the Fremantle Football Club. From the day inaugural coach Gerard Neesham was snapped by our photographer Shane French for our iconic front page (it was really Les Everett’s idea) showing a club with no players, no colours and no clubhouse, to their controversial decision to relocate to Cockburn, it’s been a rollercoaster ride. Is the club about to finally ink the ultimate achievement into its annals – Cup holder?

Long search for a home in Freo

THE Fremantle Dockers may now well and truly ensconced in Cockburn, but the club’s history began with a very different proposition: an AFL team that would be firmly based in Fremantle.

The story of how that happened — and how the club eventually came to call Cockburn home — is one of competing ambitions, money, heritage, football politics and a decades-long argument about what it means for a football club to belong to a place.

A collection of clippings from the Herald archives, brought together by former Fremantle mayor Jenny Archibald – who was in the thick of the early decision making – provide a colourful history of the club’s search for a home back to 1993, when the prospect of an AFL team for Fremantle was first taking shape.

On December 14, 1993, the AFL announced that a new team would enter the competition in 1995 and “would be based in Fremantle”, primarily because of the city’s long association with Australian rules football.

It was a deceptively simple announcement.

Within weeks, the question of where, precisely, this new Fremantle team would live became a matter of fierce local debate.

By February 1994, Fremantle council was considering four possible sites, including East Fremantle. Residents in East Fremantle were unhappy about the prospect, while East Fremantle Football Club president Len Hitchen said his club was willing to accommodate the new team.

South Fremantle, meanwhile, was facing an altogether more existential question.

Its president, Ric Gloede, said the possibility of winding up the Bulldogs to merge into the new team was “one of a number of options” being considered. Another South Fremantle figure, Brian Ciccotosto, pointed out that any merger would require 74 per cent of the club’s 2000 financial members to approve it.

The politics became even more contentious in April.

The Concerned Ordinary Residents group called a public meeting, complaining the mayor and city manager were meeting the new club behind closed doors. The group also accused the proposed AFL club of being primarily interested in making money.

At the time, the Herald was reporting the development as a battle over more than football — it was about the future of Fremantle itself.

By June 1994, tensions between the new AFL club and the established WA football authorities were also becoming apparent.

WAFL chief Peter Tannock said the two existing WAFL clubs were not guaranteed places on the new AFL club’s board because he was looking for “expertise, not sentimentality”.

South Fremantle president Gloede responded angrily, while local football campaigner Ron Davidson argued that the WAFL appeared interested in creating a team “in Fremantle instead of a Fremantle team”.

The new club was also looking for money and a physical headquarters.

In June, the Herald reported that the football club was seeking $950,000 from Fremantle council and wanted a 21-year lease on Fremantle Oval. The newspaper’s headline asked: “AFL club seeks council million.”

The club itself was still barely formed.

In July 1994, the Herald described inaugural coach Gerard Neesham as the coach of “a team without players”, “no name” and “no colours”.

The following month came a “Rough deal for Dockers?”, while another headline asked whether the Dockers’ decision was “null and void”. The emerging dispute involved the club’s proposed headquarters and the competing interests of football, the council and Fremantle’s heritage.

By September, the fight had moved directly into the heritage debate.

The club’s preferred site just below Fremantle Prison was being challenged by those who viewed the subsequent destruction of decades-old Moreton Bay figs and disrupted views as too big a price to bring AFL to the port city.

In October 1994, the club’s plans for its headquarters went in front of council.

The proposed building was to be a two-storey, 12-metre-high headquarters. The plan was modified to accommodate heritage concerns, including retention of a large Moreton Bay fig tree and a stronger separation between the proposed building and historic buildings.

Heritage

The argument over the club’s home continued into 1995.

A January campaign urged Fremantle ratepayers to vote against the northern site, warning that it would obscure views of the prison, diminish the prominence of the site and potentially jeopardise its World Heritage listing.

The dispute became sufficiently heated for one Herald headline to ask: “Dockers to quit Fremantle?”

The paper reported claims that the club was considering abandoning Fremantle Oval, though club chief executive David Hatt rejected the suggestion, saying that the club’s choice of site did not mean it wanted to leave Fremantle.

A subsequent poll produced what the newspaper described as a “Double poll win”, with ratepayers voting on the Dockers’ proposed headquarters and the future of the site.

By September, however, the Dockers’ headquarters were still unresolved.

A compromise was eventually reached involving a second site between the Victoria Pavilion and the South Fremantle Football Club’s premises.

The club eventually established a training and administration facility in Fremantle, which opened in November 2000.

For a time, the argument appeared settled.

It wasn’t.

By 2012, the Dockers were again looking for a new home.

The club said its existing facilities were now “well behind the AFL benchmark”, citing advances in technology and sports science and the increasingly competitive nature of the AFL.

It said it had identified a shortlist of alternative sites within the greater Fremantle area for a new elite training and administration facility.

Two competing visions emerged.

One was a plan for a redeveloped Fremantle Oval.

The other was a plan for a new facility at Cockburn Central.

What followed was another remarkably public battle over where the Dockers should belong.

A 2012 newspaper clipping records that Cockburn Council had increased its bid to $113 million, after Fremantle Council had unveiled a $100 million blueprint aimed at keeping the Dockers in the port city. The headline declared: “AFL bid hits $113m.”

The campaign to “Keep Freo in Freo” began again.

Letters to the Herald reflected the same competing arguments that had surrounded the club almost two decades earlier: supporters wanted a successful team; the club wanted a long-term home and state-of-the-art facilities; and Fremantle residents questioned what would be lost if the football club moved away.

Ultimately, Cockburn won that contest.

The Dockers’ present-day training and administration base is the product of that 2012-era decision, creating an unusual situation for a club whose name, identity and origins remain so closely associated with Fremantle.

The irony is particularly striking because the AFL’s original announcement in 1993 had been unequivocal: the new team would be based in Fremantle because of the city’s long association with Australian football.

The club’s history therefore contains two quite different definitions of “home”.

There is the physical home — the modern training and administration base at Cockburn, built around the facilities the club said it needed to compete in the modern AFL.

And there is the cultural home — Fremantle, the city whose name the club carries, whose football traditions helped win it an AFL licence and whose streets and football grounds were at the centre of the battles that accompanied its birth.