• MP Simone McGurk.
WITH the Grand Final looming, the Chook delved into its glittering list of contacts to see what Freo’s movers and shakers were doing for the big game.
Well, we flicked through the dusty old Rolodex in our office.
Some interesting numbers in there—Adele Carles, Troy Buswell, and the guy who used to play the kazoo outside Timezone.
First up was BEN ELTON. He’s not even going to be in Fremantle for the game. Revoke his citizenship, we say.
But to be fair, he’s got a decent excuse, and it’s not writing a sitcom about Baldrick.
“Sadly having just landed in the UK to direct two productions back to back I won’t be in Aus on Saturday,” he told the Chook.
“But of course I’m thrilled for Fremantle to be in the final and will be very sorry not to be around to soak up all the excitement.
“A grand final and our new bridge almost ready. Good times in the West!”
From the world of politics, Labor Fremantle MP SIMONE MCGURK was keeping true to her working-class roots—watching the Grand Final with the proletariat.
“I’m braving the Cappuccino Strip to watch the game right here in Freo,” she says.
“I’ve got a framed photo in my office of the 2013 crowd and I’m hoping to match it with an updated image of an even bigger crowd (if that’s possible!) but more importantly, this time the Dockers bring home the cup!”
A Dockers supporter of more than 20 years, McGurk was “ecstatic for this weekend”.
Well, maybe not “Wharfie Time”—she used to lock horns with the Maritime Union of Australia back in the day.
From Planet Rock, where grizzled music journos go to sip bourbon and talk about Steely Dan, we caught up with BOB GORDON, one of WA’s most likeable and acclaimed music writers.
“The last time the Dockers reached the Grand Final in 2013 I recall watching it in the beer garden at the Norfolk Hotel with Tex Perkins,” he says.
“It wasn’t the result we were all hoping for but this time will be different.”
Gordon says the image of musos preferring to smoke a durrie instead of running around and chasing a ball is somewhat of a myth.
“Musos are often stereotyped as people who refer to footy as ‘sportsball’ but I’ve seen quite a few who have been best on ground at the annual Reclink Community Cup games,” he says.
“From Tim Rogers to Tom Fisher there’s definitely a few secret weapons amongst the music scene.”
A reflective, mild-mannered author jumping around wildly on Instagram?
Yes, the Chook spotted award-winning flash fiction writer and ex-ABC radio host GILLIAN O’SHAUGHNESSY celebrating the Dockers’ win over Sydney with novelist David Whish-Wilson and Greens MLC Sophie McNeill.
I think they call it tri-lateral support. No AUKUS jokes, please.
A mad Dockers fan who has lived in the port city for 50 years, O’Shaughnessy still wears her original scarf on match days.
“We name all our cars after Freo players, the first being our touchstone, the legend Clive Waterhouse. Our current two Mini Coopers are called Murphy and Dudley,” she says.
“I hung on very patiently for an AFL club that reflected my love of Fremantle; I never warmed to the mob up the road, and I am firmly of the opinion that you can’t change teams so I sat it out until we had one.”
O’Shaughnessy will be out of town for the Grand Final, continuing a long-standing tradition of celebrating her birthday in the Blue Mountains with friends. Watching the final will be a bittersweet affair for the former Afternoons presenter, who misses her late ABC radio colleague Russell Woolf, “a die-hard West Coast fan”.
“We both loved the cross-town rivalry as much as we loved our teams,” O’Shaughnessy says.
“We bet a wheel of cheese on the outcome of every derby for over a decade. Even after he’d moved to Minnesota, he posted a can of whipped cheddar when the Eagles lost a Freo derby.
“It will be five years since his death this October and he is missed so deeply still by so many.
“I’ll be thinking of him and I’ll be thinking of Niall Lucy, another old friend who loved Fremantle with a depth of passion and superstition unsurpassed by anyone I’ve known before or since.
“…Such is the depth of feeling that goes hand in hand with being a Freo supporter. We’re working class, a little bit feral and proud of it.”