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Fremantle merger argument still echoes

By Mr Dandalooa

In perusing the ubiquitous internet for ‘footy goss’ this week I stumbled on something that has been a topic of barbecue conversation for many years.

In fact, I was at a barbie on the weekend when my Carlton-supporting relative raised the issue.

Why didn’t the best of the WAFL’s South Fremantle and East Fremantle football clubs merge to form the Fremantle Football Club when it first entered the AFL, which now seems an eternity ago?

There are many arguments for and against which is why it has remained a topic of good discussion for many years.

On another footy website, a creative thinker and blogger JungleMuffin posted a new-look Fremantle Football Club logo which appears to combine the WAFL’s South Fremantle Bulldogs and East Fremantle Sharks into the Fremantle Bullsharks.

It basically is the South Fremantle Bulldogs logo head on the East Fremantle Sharks logo shark body, with the name BULLSHARKS on top.

I thought hmmmmm a bit left field but could this work? Especially now with talk about a third team being established in WA.
Joondalup mayor Troy Pickard reckons the state could do with another AFL team and he wants to meet league boss Andrew Demetriou to push his case for Joondalup to be the next home to a club.
Demetriou said last week stated that WA and northern Queensland were prospective locations for a possible 20th team, although he did say the AFL was in no hurry to grant such licenses.
The idea of a third team in WA was greeted warmly by the WA Football Commission, West Coast and the Fremantle Football Club, who immediately raised their reservations about the sustainability of another club.
But the BULLSHARKS was an interesting concept.

“It would look a lot more menacing, coming towards you with the body and tail whipping through behind it, but alas, I’m not a graphics artist, and MS paint just doesn’t quite cut it. You get the point though,” JungleMuffin wrote.

“A lot better than a bogan holding an anchor.”

DizzyHB noted on the same site that if the club were to change the logo it should just be a white anchor on a purple shield with “FREMANTLE” written in big white and black letters.

“If they want to go further with that then Purple Haze home strip and clash strip for away,” he said.

“Really when we were formed we should’ve been called the Sharks and sang the Bulldogs song to keep everybody happy but we’ve got our own identity now.”

Blogger NiGHTFuRY said Bullsharks was “awful.... just really awful” and was adamant that the club should keep the status quo.

“Just have Fremantle FC on our logo. We can’t legally use Dockers on our merch anyways...” he said.

“We don’t need a new nic… and besides I don’t think we’ll ever shake the ‘Dockers’ moniker completely, anyways.”

Had both Fremantle WAFL clubs merged their best to create the new Fremantle team 16 years ago, it would have diluted the talent in the WAFL.

At that time perhaps both clubs would have struggled to survive and may have called in the WA Football Commission to help raise some funds to get by. Who knows!

Without the draft concessions that the West Coast Eagles were granted about 10 years prior, the Dockers were a little less auspicious when they first entered the league.

Few would argue that the club hasn’t quite reached its potential and there have been many years where the Dockers were a solid unit on paper, but simply couldn’t deliver the goods on field.

Had a merged East and South Fremantle been able to participate in the VFL way back when, I think most would agree that that a few more premiership cups would have found themselves in the good old Wild West.

Fremantle has a rich and long history of football, dating back to the late 1800s.

The first recorded game was in 1868 when a match took place between the Town of Fremantle and the Western Australian Temperance and Recreation Society. 

No record has been kept on the type of football played, but it could be assumed that it was a hybrid of the game known at the time as Victorian Rules.

That aside, in WAFL terms, South and East Fremantle have a long and rich and successful history in football.

East Fremantle has a coveted record of at least one premiership in every decade of the club’s existence.

South Fremantle may be a little less successful, even succumbing to the indignity of the wooden spoon on several occasions, but the club has proved successful winning its fair share of flags, taking the premiership this year.

Despite the meandering successes though, contemplating a Bulldogs-Sharks merger has become unthinkable, taboo even, among many footy punters.

The emergence then of the Fremantle Dockers at least gave a unification of purpose, even if it didn’t produce the best team in its inception.

No-one knows whether a Bulldogs-Sharks merger would have bred success, but it’s worth talking about in the public arena.