We might be ‘hypocritical hippies’, but us Dockers fans are people too

“Wilson, like a cork in the ocean over his head. Oh my word! What a goal!”

Dennis Cometti’s legendary call of Peter Wilson’s goal from the West Coast Eagles’ first Grand Final win in 1992 is one I’ll remember forever. I loved that team, and have always wondered why I jumped ship to the new purple squad from Fremantle just three seasons later.

Earlier this year I met Fremantle Dockers chief executive Simon Garlick, and his first question was just that: “What’s your Freo origin story?”

A deep corner of my brain spat out: “I was a pie boy at Subiaco Oval in 1995, so I went to every home game in the Dockers’ first season.”

Suddenly, it all came back. Fremantle was a place I loved, and all things maritime resonated with 14-year-old, surfing-addicted me. I probably thought purple was cool too.

In my final year at school I studied Cloudstreet, which quickly became my favourite book. Seeing Tim Winton read excerpts at a literary breakfast hosted by my favourite journalist, Freo tragic Matt Price, and hearing my literary heroes joke about their beloved Dockers confirmed that these wharfies were my people.

Thirty-two years on, the Dockers’ community work and proud Indigenous history only strengthen my love for the club. Freo just do things right.

Perhaps that’s why their ongoing partnership with Woodside, Australia’s largest oil and gas company and one of the country’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, bothers me so much.

Members have become increasingly vocal about the sponsorship, yet when the subject arises the club’s language reverts to the corporate waffle it normally shies away from.

When a former state premier and passionate Dockers supporter like Carmen Lawrence puts the club on blast, surely there’s something amiss.

I got lucky in the grand final ballot, and as a Fremantle member won the right to buy an obstructed-view standing-room ticket at the MCG.

I landed in Melbourne just in time for one of Western Australia’s only newspapers to call me a hypocrite for catching a flight to support a team I love, while daring to cover the Woodside logo on my jumper.

It’s the oldest “whatabout” argument in the book.

The “everything is made from petroleum” line of thinking suggests that using rubber or plastic means you’re no longer allowed to care about climate change.

But it ignores the fact that the emissions from my annual flight log are a drop in the ocean compared with those from the company that claims to be Freo’s biggest supporter.

My dad’s career was spent as a pipeline engineer, and after graduating from uni I worked FIFO myself. Until I turned 26 and decided it wasn’t for me, my existence was almost entirely funded by fossil fuels.

Does that make me a hypocrite? Possibly. But acknowledging the role fossil fuels have played in my life doesn’t disqualify me from wanting the companies that produce them to do better.

Nobody is perfect, so let’s give up on perfection. Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction, and if everyone at least tries, especially the corporations capable of having the greatest impact, maybe we can start moving the needle.

My Fremantle membership cost $1079 this season. Three finals tickets, not included in my membership, doubled that figure. That’s roughly 2 per cent of my annual income, none of it tax-deductible.

Last year, my fellow members and I poured almost $22 million into Freo’s coffers, more than twice the club’s entire sponsorship revenue of $9.6 million.

There are no private suites or spring rolls on game day for us, and when it rains, we get wet. Still, we should be allowed to have a say in whom the club associates with.

If I don’t agree with what Woodside does, why should wearing my Freo jumper come with a contract that says I have to wear its logo too?

My Fremantle membership is much more than watching 46 men play sport; it’s three hours with two of my best mates every second week.

The past five years of onfield ups and downs have been matched by our trio’s record off the park. One wedding, two births, a couple of breakups, one reconciliation, a few close friends lost, and this year the passing of one of our Dads, a lifelong Dockers fan who never got to see a flag.

I brought my son Julian to Melbourne with me on his first boys’ trip. At the grand old age of one, he was four minutes from seeing Freo’s first premiership at the ’G.

One day, he might grow up and think his dad is a hypocritical hippy. I’m fine with that, as long as he knows I tried my best to leave the world a little better for him and his mates.

I just hope bloody Freo have won a flag or two before I’m done.

Chris Binns is a Dockers member, ex-editor of Australia’s Surfing Life and former Subiaco Oval pie boy.