It doesn't matter how you get there — the direct path, the scenic route, maybe you escaped from jail — you just have to get there. The Swans lulled us into a false sense of minimum security, but we broke out! Time to Restump Podcast just our second-ever successful preliminary final.

Thirteen years after defeating the Sydney Swans in a preliminary final to partake in our first grand final, we've delivered a repeat of the feat.

We'd be lying if we said we weren't all bewildered at our performance early Friday evening, but we settled and turned it into a breath-holding, blood-pumping, beautiful night!

To be brutally honest, celebrations momentarily aside, we may have been fortunate it was the Pullman five and not the Pullman three or four. We really only just got there in the end. Add a Chad Warner and/or an Isaac Heeney into the mix and things quite possibly may have been devastatingly different. But they went there, things weren’t different and we’re off to Grand Final!

We matched the Swans' pressure, but they handled it far more effectively than us. We continue to be susceptible to high pressure, and it can be the key to our undoing.

Was there a Telstra or Optus outage in the area? It was constant communication breakdown early. Oscar McDonald and Luke Ryan, and Jye Amiss and Josh Treacy, were incommunicado. Connectivity and cohesiveness were replaced with confusion, finger-pointing and second-guessing.

There were some conspicuous absentees within our 50 metre arc and it got to a point where we eventually had to call on the SES to conduct a search party for the missing tall forwards.

But while efficiency wasn't front and centre, we were winning most of the numbers, just not the ones that definitively count.

Thankfully, you don't have to be better than your opponent all night; you just have to be better for longer. You just have to be in front when it matters most and, as we have done way more often than not this year, we were.

Moments of magic can sometimes make the difference, and that's when the magic moment-makers made their moves.

We could almost attribute the remarkable win to Hayden Young's absurd goal after the three-quarter-time siren. Not because it put us within range, but because of the much-needed belief it instilled.

Jye Amiss somehow managed his moment of ridiculousness, Shai Bolton successfully let go from 50, and then Paddy Voss entered with his moment of absolute mastery. Stiff-arming a 14-year almost 300-game stalwart defender and then perfectly executing the banana to goal, will enter the history and histrionics books. It'll be one of those precious moments we'll talk about forever.

We're the Fremantle Dockers! We'll never abandon our inherent unconventionality, but that's what makes us eternally exciting. We don't do boring, regimented monotony! Flawlessness is for the fundamentalists! What is finishing first without flair and heart failure along the way?

We’re now off to the MCG to play on the final Saturday in September for just the second time. But before we all roll into the Melbourne concrete-colosseum jungle to take on the Lions, there’s plenty of time for our usual inconsequential and insignificant nonsense on the pod.

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