The Dockers

The AFL announced that a new team would enter the league in 1995, with the tentative name of "Fremantle Sharks".

The decision to base the new club in Fremantle was primarily due to the long association of Australian rules football in Fremantle.

The Dockers

The names "Fremantle Football Club", "Fremantle Dockers" and the club colours of purple, red, green and white were announced on 12 July 1994.

Until 2011 the Fremantle Football Club used the anchor symbol as the basis for all of their guernseys.

The home guernsey was purple, with a white anchor on the front separating the chest area into two panels, which were coloured red and green to represent the traditional maritime port and starboard colours. The away or clash guernsey was all white with a purple anchor.

Since 2003, the club has had the Governors of Western Australia as its patron.

The Dockers

The Fremantle Football Hall of Legends was inaugurated by Fremantle Football Club in 1995, in recognition of the new AFL team's links with its home city's football heritage.

In 2015, the club were crowned minor premiers for the first time in their history, earning their first piece of silverware with the McClelland Trophy. However, the club failed to convert this into a grand final appearance, losing to Hawthorn by 27 points in its home preliminary final.

Fremantle docker

a seafarers expression

The afternoon sea breeze that was predictable and in the right direction to enable sailing ships to dock in the port of Fremantle.
This sea breeze is called the Fremantle Docker for the obvious reason that it is the breeze by which you dock. Because of the prevailing daytime breezes, square rigged sailing ships could rarely find a wind to bring them inshore until the air rising from the heat of the land caused a sea breeze to appear at the end of the day.

 

Fremantle Docker

The name adopted by the AFL team the Fremantle Dockers

 

There was one snag to the name: the link between the then Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, which was de‑registered in 1993 following a criminal investigation.

Fremantle Dockers inaugural CEO David Hatt and inaugural chairman Ross Kelly utilised a myth around a common vernacular term in WA to get the name across the line.

He allayed the board’s fears that effectively the name didn’t come from the docks at all, it came from the famous sea breeze which the chairman affirmed was called the Fremantle Docker as it used to blow the sailing ships into Fremantle harbour.