On a Saturday afternoon in Round 19, Port Adelaide and Fremantle met in what the faithful call the dockside derby — a contest that became a meditation on resilience, as an injury-depleted Port side seized early control through midfield dominance, only to find Fremantle, a team long acquainted with slow starts, refusing to accept the story being written for them. The match unfolded as sport so often does: not as a simple tale of the stronger prevailing, but as a reminder that scorelines are living things, shaped as much by will and circumstance as by talent.