But dad’s mind is far from this celebration at their Mission Viejo, California home.
“Hurry up, blow out the candles, let’s go!” Chris McNeil shouts. “Freo’s playing!”
The Freo Dockers are ready to rumble in the Round 16 Carlton Mid Derby and the WA-born, Freo die-hard, known to his Australian and American mates as ‘Macca’, is keen to hit the couch, connect his tablet to his flat screen TV, eat a Drunken Cow – his favourite, burgundy-wine flavoured, garlic and pearl onion-spiced meat pie – savour a beer and watch the action.
“When Freo comes on, everything else takes a backseat,” McNeil says, half-jokingly.
“In the 10 years I’ve been here, I’ve never known any other Freo supporters. I wish I had someone else to share it with.”
Macca, you’re no longer alone, mate.
You may have to make room on your couch for Matthew Raffa, an equally rabid Freo fan born in Hamilton Hill, raised in Coogee and now living in San Diego.
Save a spot, too, for Beth Nollenberger. She’s an American who adopted Freo during a three-year work assignment in Perth. McNeil, Raffa and Nollenberger all play for different American amateur footy clubs in the recreational, nationwide United States Australian Football League.
Now, with the USAFL’s growth coinciding with the expanding number of Fremantle fans worldwide, supporters in unlikely places such as Southern California are emerging, forging friendships and hoping to share an experience they haven’t yet had – watching the Fremantle Dockers as a community.
“It’d be fun,” McNeil says.
“If they’re real fans, they’d know the players, the game plan and our style of footy. We would especially enjoy it during the finals.”
Raffa, 31, works for a company that builds luxury yacht interiors, watches Freo each week on the AFLTV website and plays half-forward for the USAFL’s San Diego Lions. His family’s roots in Fremantle span two generations and as a young adult, Raffa spent every weekend there.
“Me and my buddies had some nice cars, like (Holden) V8 Commodores and used to meet up at Parry Street Car Park, then hang out doing ‘bog laps,’ cruising around town, with the windows down and the music up,” Raffa says.
“I also used to walk through the markets, go down to the port, fish off the docks and free dive for crays in the Inner Harbour toward the Left Bank.”
Raffa says he barracked for West Coast before Freo’s AFL entry, but Freo Dockers fans at Subiaco swayed him.
“They were more passionate,” Raffa says. “I used to go with my dad and sit on the wing and the fans used to beat the big drums. My love for Freo kept growing.”
Raffa was at Patersons for the Round 1 Carlton Mid Derby, using the membership tickets of his parents Claude and Marie to take his American wife, Bonnie to her first home game. Raffa reckons the noise he remembers from the 2006 home semi final win over Melbourne was louder than the 1994 Grand Final he attended at the MCG.
“It was unbelievable,” Raffa recalls. “That last quarter was intense.”
The crowd’s intensity attracted the 34-year-old Nollenberger to the Purple Haze. She now lives in Huntington Beach, California and works as a petroleum engineer, but first experienced Fremantle footy 10 years ago, living on York Street, a virtual torpedo punt from Subiaco Oval.
“I could hear the fans chanting from outside my house,” says Nollenberger, who trains with McNeil’s team and is working to organise a Southern California USAFL women’s side.
“I went to my first game in 2004. I support the Freo Dockers. I always liked the anchor on the jumpers. It screamed, ‘We are Fremantle!’”
Despite his passion for the Dockers, McNeil often wears a Bombers’ jumper – he is currently the senior coach of, and player on, the USAFL’s Orange County Bombers, which incorporates the Essendon look. He hopes to shepherd his club to the USAFL Grand Final, scheduled for October, in Austin, Texas.
But Macca – who for a decade lived two blocks from East Fremantle Oval, on Dalgety Street, and now runs a business called Look Signs and Graphics – bleeds purple.
“I was on board the moment there was talk of a Freo team coming into the AFL,” McNeil says.
“I went to the Freo Dockers’ first-ever practice match, against St. Kilda. Me and my mates probably jumped the fence. I remember a skinny kid in the forward pocket named Peter Bell and I thought he could play.”
McNeil’s lengthy amateur footy resume includes a stint with a Gidgegannup club co-coached by 1979 East Fremantle Western Australia National Football League premiership players Ian Thomson and Merv Carrott.
When he’s not coaching his own side, Macca continues, like Raffa, Nollenberger and American-based Freo supporters yet to find each other, barracking for the Freo Dockers from home.
“I’ve been through the pain,” McNeil says.
“It’s gonna get better when we get to the Grand Final. I hope it’ll happen soon.”
Other columns by Stateside Docker Gil Griffin:
It began with a Derby
A Tinseltown take on Freo
International stars, local legends
Indigenous Round: What does it all stand for?
Draws best when your partner barracks for the other team
My ‘hardcore’ Freo routine
