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Airfare prices were simply a number when diehard Fremantle Dockers fans bought tickets to Melbourne on the train ride home from the club's elimination final victory against the Western Bulldogs a week ago.
Key points:
- Dockers fans are getting behind their team in their return to the finals
- Some diehards are preparing to fly across the Nullarbor
- In Fremantle, the city is turning purple ahead of the Pies clash
Tony Carroll and his daughter Felicity are part of the Dockers cheer squad, and have followed the team over east as they take on Collingwood at the MCG in a do-or-die semi-final tonight.
Even with no accommodation booked and less than 24 hours in Melbourne, Mr Carroll did not have to think twice to make the journey.
"It's just one of those things you love to do," he said.
"You do it for your team, you do it for those guys who are killing themselves each game to do their best, so the more we can help them and support them the better."
Several thousand travelling Fremantle fans will be going up against the famously vocal Magpie army in what is expected to be a crowd of about 90,000.
It will be the second-biggest crowd the Dockers have ever played before, trailing only the 100,007 who watched the 2013 grand final loss to Hawthorn.
Bringing his drum on the journey, Mr Carroll has organised a march from Federation Square to the MCG before the game.
"We want to let everyone know that we may be small, but we're going to be loud and we're proud and purple," he said.
Proud mum takes detour to MCG
Tickets to the semi-final sold out a little more than a day after they went on sale, and the mother of Dockers defender Heath Chapman wasted no time in getting her spot on the plane.
Linda Chapman planned to return to Perth from a holiday in Cairns on Thursday, but after the Dockers' nailbiting 13-point win over the Bulldogs, she diverted her flight to Melbourne instead.
"It actually doesn't seem real yet," she said.
"I can't believe I'm going to the MCG for the first time and not only that, I'm actually going to see my son run out on the field.
"There's going to be thousands and thousands of Collingwood supporters there, so a couple of Dockers voices might be nice for the boys to hear."
Freo turns purple
It is the first finals campaign for the Dockers since 2015, and the port city has made the most of the team's seven-year wait ending.
The City of Fremantle was painting a "massive" Dockers logo in Walyalup Koort (King's Square) on Friday in celebration.
In 2013, the city painted the cappuccino strip purple in the lead-up to the preliminary final.
Just off the main road, Ballers Sports Bar Fremantle has kept morale high since the beginning of the finals.
The bar is decorated head to toe in Dockers merchandise, with purple drinks and even purple hot dogs on offer.
Venue manager and self-professed Dockers tragic, Ben Kealley, said the bar was expecting "absolute mayhem" tonight.
He anticipated the 200-person capacity venue would be full an hour before the first bounce.
"We've been working shorthanded during the week so that we can concentrate our staff on the weekend," he said.
Mr Kealley said some local businesses were hesitant to get too excited about the possibility of the Dockers reaching the grand final, but he had few reservations.
"You've got to take a risk and embrace it early on and that's what we've done," he said.