Football media heavyweight Patrick Smith has hailed Fremantle’s qualifying final victory over Geelong as one of the highlights of the season.

“A brave and sophisticated victory to enrich football lore” Smith wrote in The Australian on Monday following the 15-point win at Simonds Stadium on Saturday.

Smith said Fremantle had been used as a “pawn in a cross-country fixture dispute” and labelled the AFL’s decision to play the match in Geelong as “cynical and needlessly compromised the finals system.”

Geelong, by finishing the season second and ahead of Fremantle, had won the right to play in Melbourne, not Geelong,” Smith wrote.

“The Dockers beat Geelong after being dragged out of town and down the highway to play at the hamlet the Cats call home.”

Smith said the win at a ground Geelong had won 49 off its past 51 games at was made all the more meritorious by the fact Ross Lyon had punted on resting a host of stars the week before.

“Sides have rested one or two players at the end of a long season and on the eve of the finals, but this was a lorry load of players to shift out and then reverse back in,” he wrote.

“It was complicated by the loss of central defender Michael Johnson through injury, and although Luke McPharlin returned to the backline he had missed the past eight games. All of this could have jumbled Fremantle's rhythm.”

Smith said, in a season dragged down by a number of negative stories, Fremantle’s win, along with Port Adelaide’s upset of Collingwood just a few hours later, salvaged something back for the game.

“In a year of miserable stories, football the game triumphed on Saturday. And it was fantastic. Just fantastic,” he wrote.