Tessa Jachmann (21) and Lauren Miller (21) both have supported Fremantle as long as their can remember and are very excited about the finals campaign. Picture: Daniel Wilkins Source: The Sunday Times
THE Fremantle Dockers will carry more than just the expectations of their fans as they head into the finals.
The entire port city is looking for the right catalyst to spark a revival of its fortunes.
Some are hoping the Dockers' finals march will provoke a much-needed morale boost similar to the legendary yachting triumph in the America's Cup during the mid-1980s.
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Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt this week launched a Go Freo campaign, which will see retailers decking out their shops with purple Dockers paraphernalia.
"This is just what the city needs," Dr Pettitt said.
"The city has been like a ship floundering at sea for the past two decades due to economic changes and an underperforming strategic plan by the city."
The Go Freo campaign is a joint venture between the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce, the city council and the Fremantle Football Club.
It will be a colourful ray of hope on a landscape that has increasingly become like a ghost town. The streets are littered with For Lease signs in shopfronts.
Dr Pettitt said getting business owners involved with the chance to win a signed photo of the team for the best decorated outlet had been a good bonding exercise.
"The city has faced a decline in sales by High St retailers as shoppers moved to big-box retail," he said.
"The global financial crisis and the surge in internet shopping were other factors."
Fremantle Chamber of Commerce chief executive Tim Milsom agreed.
He said the success of the Dockers was a timely reminder that the city needed to start focusing on the positive, not the negative.
"We have something like 60-plus empty shops in Fremantle," he said. "We can't compete with shopping centres like Booragoon, but what we can do is alert people to the things that Booragoon can't do.
"We can champion things like the tall ships coming to Freo, the Indonesian naval cadets marching through the city and we can get excited about our team reaching the finals."
Long-term Fremantle business owners agreed the city was long overdue for a positive shot in the arm.
Domenic D'Alessandro, a veteran of the cappuccino strip and part owner of Gino's Cafe, was a child when America's Cup hysteria took over the town. And he's experienced the decline in pedestrian traffic in the past 26 years.
"We need something like the America's Cup all over again," he said.
"The feeling here is palpable after a Dockers' win.
"People come back here from Subiaco to Gino's to celebrate. The players come in sometimes and it creates a good vibe. It would be great for Fremantle if they won the Grand Final. Even getting into the finals is fantastic for the city."
Eleni Kakulas, owner of another Freo stalwart business Kakulas Sister Grocer, is a dyed-in-the-wool Dockers fan and so are her staff, who have not stopped at just decorating the shopfront.
They have decked themselves out in purple for the finals.
"There are a lot of shops closing down so there is a bit of negativity out there," she said.
"It is really hard for small business at the moment."
But Robert Bodkin, owner of Bodkins Bootery, is not so sure.
He is neither a Dockers' fan nor a true believer that purple power can save the town.
He has the world-weary approach of someone who's seen it all before.
"I saw it with the America's Cup," Mr Bodkin, who opened his High St store in 1972, said.
"That was a double-edged sword. It put Fremantle on the map and then the rents went up. Then over the past 20-odd years business has suffered through duplication of shops. There are now hundreds of hairdressers, coffee shops and an excess of $2 shops.
"We need to be realistic that we are competing in a different world now. People travel, they buy online, they don't dress up to go out. You don't see people walking around the streets of Freo carrying shopping bags."
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