Do we all need to go guts up in the Bahamas for a while? To be fair to the Gold Coast Suns, if we’d gotten out of jail we would’ve been charged with stealing. Time to Restump Podcast the 1-point heartbreak.

Well that stung and it may have done irreparable damage to our souls. While Freo fans didn’t buy into The West’s revenue generating clickbait idiocy with their ‘easy Freo final' back page, we all obviously had high hopes of extending the season.

However, we got Sunburnt so we bow out of season 2025 with a what would've been, could've been, maybe should've been but didn’t quite end up being, result.

It was a typical Freo roller coaster season ride as we went from eating the chocolates in the frying pan, to sucking on boiled lollies in the fire. We were a basket case by round 8, finals bound a few games later.

We’ve done the full suite of emotions since Saturday night, but after the mental anguish, pondering the reasons why and the reasons why not, and internally asking ourselves the irrationally instinctive rhetorical questions like, how did this happen, who do we need and who needs to go… we arrive at some sort of pragmatic peace.

The basic long and simple short of it is, the Suns were simply better for longer. Now obviously, the superiority for a single point margin time period is all but negligible. But the soul-destroying reality is, that's all that is required.

Really other than sporadic poor decision making, some maybe finals frenzied forced skill errors and several less than ideal forward 50 entries, we didn’t do too much wrong and the team will benefit from the experience.

If you had to pinpoint it without hanging individuals, we’d probably note the 2nd quarter with 5 minutes remaining on the clock. In that period of red time rampage, the Suns managed 6 inside 50s and put 4 goals 1 on the board, while our Freo folk failed to trouble the scorers from 4 inside 50s. 

Must be said though, generating just 7 scores from 29 inside 50s for a half, tells you you’re doing plenty right, but the important part catastrophically wrong.

We couldn’t get it done for Fyfey and now any on field remnants of the 2013 grand final era are gone. However, we let Nat go gradually which helped ease the pain of goodbye.

And while we couldn’t get it done for Fyfe, if you can distance yourself from the pain of Saturday night and view it with momentary detachment, it’s hard not to have a little smile for the Gold Coast Suns and David Swallow. 

We know far too well what they have been through and for them to have their first ever draftee kick the winning score in his and his team’s first ever final, in what is his retirement year, it’s a great story and a wonderful football moment.

Ok, enough of that nonsense. So, putting the purple hat back on, we’ve just put away a 16 win season, we’ve got one of the league's youngest and most inexperienced lists that's just experienced a final. We’ve got a collective with a non-traditional professional Fremantle mindset, we’ve got the right guy in charge and we’re on a trend heading in a north east direction. We haven’t even cracked the window yet! We’re only warming up!

We’re a bit light on for detail and analysis here so we’ll dig much deeper on the pod and relive and re-visit those irrational instinctive questions.

So, if you’re struggling to come to terms with the result and managing the fall out is too heavy a burden, well many ears make light listening, so come in for the conversation. We'll talk through the temporary trauma, absolve the anguish, make some mental mending milestones and procure the pragmatic perspective ready to purple back up and go again in about 6 months’ time.

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