Fremantle started their 2014 campaign off strongly with a 70-point thumping of Collingwood in the opening game of the season and continued that dominance when they took on the Gold Coast Suns in their first home game of the season.
Freo fans braved the wet conditions for the Starlight Purple Haze game to witness an eight-goal victory over the Suns in a highly physical match.
It was a relatively close game up until the first half, with Freo leading at half-time 5.5 (35) to 3.5 (23), before Fremantle began to show dominance after the main break.
Aaron Sandilands dominated in the ruck scoring a then career-high 58 hit-outs and led the Fremantle Dockers to a 12.15 (87) to 5.9 (39) victory over the Suns.
“It’s always good just to play in a Purple Haze game,” the Starlight ambassador said.
“The build-up throughout the week, we get to spend a fair bit of time with all the (Starlight) kids,
“It’s always good to perform in games like that.”
Twenty-one of Sandilands’s hit-outs were to Fremantle’s advantage and he was well supported by David Mundy (33 disposals), Michael Barlow (32 disposals), Nat Fyfe (29 disposals) and Stephen Hill (23 disposals), putting Sandilands at ease.
“It makes my job a lot easier when you’ve got those guys underneath you,” he said.
“You’ve just got to put the ball in their vicinity and they do the rest,
“That’s one of our strengths at the moment as we’ve got a very strong midfield and a lot of guys that can go through there and you love having them around you in the midfield.”
Other notable performances in Fremantle’s 48-point dispatching of Gold Coast included Matt de Boer, who laid nine tackles and Michael Walters, who took two contested marks to go with his two goals.
Fremantle continued to dominate in the rest of the 2014 home and away season, making their third consecutive finals series, before bowing out to Port Adelaide in the Semi-Finals.
Almost two years to the date later the Fremantle Dockers are set to take on the Gold Coast Suns again in the Starlight Purple Haze game, which will see Sandilands return after missing round one due to suspension.
“It feels like a long time coming,” he said.
“Really excited to be back and in this special occasion being able to play in the Starlight Haze Game,
“The ambassadors have got right behind and we’ve done some great fundraising and hopefully everyone can get behind it on Saturday night and raise some more money.”
