COLLINGWOODÂ
3.4Â Â Â Â 7.8 Â Â Â 7.10 Â Â Â Â 12.13 Â Â Â (85)
FREMANTLEÂ
0.1 Â Â Â 1.4 Â Â Â 3.5Â Â Â Â 5.7 Â Â Â (37)
GOALS Collingwood:  White 2, Cox 2, Cloke 2, Treloar, Aish, de Goey, Smith, Greenwood, Phillips. Fremantle: Ballantyne 2, Pavlich 2, Walters.
BEST Collingwood: Reid, Marsh, Treloar, Crisp, Smith, Sinclair, Williams, Grundy, Cox.  Fremantle: Barlow, Walters, Crozier,  Neale, Blakely, Collins, Â
UMPIRESÂ Ryan, Pannell, Mitchell, Stephens.
CROWDÂ 20,320 at the MCG.
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Collingwood were far too good for Fremantle, winning by 48 points in front of a historically low crowd at the MCG.
The question was not why only 20,320Â people turned up to the MCG on Friday night, but why that many did.
This was the first time Collingwood had drawn so few people to a home game at the MCG since World War II when in round 5 of 1940, 20,043 attended. The league's power club could even have lost money at the gate for the first time in decades.
Even the rusted-on evidently feel the cold, so with the the temperature dipping to 2.6 degrees no parking at the ground, disruptions on Frankston train line, the fact this was 14th versus 15th, that a hail was forecast, and it was live on TV where red wine and warmth was on offer and, more importantly as it turns out, a remote control, attending was a challenging proposition.
Within an hour, the Harry Potter movie probably looked tempting – at least there was some magic in that.
Collingwood with most of their first-choice forwards out and their formerly first-choice forward back in the team as a last resort, it appeared unlikely that against a traditionally scungy Ross Lyon defence they would be able to kick a score. Those assumptions were rendered not just wrong but absolutely misplaced for it was Fremantle who could not score. The Dockers kicked 1.4 for the first half - the second lowest half-time score of Lyon's tenure. Â
They were denied the ball in large part after Collingwood broke forward from the first bounce and, kindly for storytellers, Travis Cloke kicked the first goal with a fend-off and a snap. From the next bounce, Collingwood took the ball tumbling into the goal square where Mason Cox somehow stretched a giraffe's hoof at the ball to flick it through for a goal.
Collingwood kept the ball forward but splattered it at the goal – two went out on the full, another wide and out of bounds and four more shots were behinds.
Both sides used a loose player at times early behind the ball, then as Collingwood harried them through the midfield and pressured the ball to remain in their half of the ground, the Dockers pulled both Hayden Ballantyne and Michael Walters up to the stoppages so they were playing with an empty forward line.
That said, Collingwood, with 20 inside-50s to seven in the first quarter, there was not a whole lot of supply.
Tom Phillips scrounged a goal in the second term after Mason Cox had shown quick and clever hands to match his clever feet in the first quarter, to handpass the ball inside and open up play up. Cox then marked a dropping ball at his waist as Zac Dawson found him too big to move around.
Fremantle were better able to keep the ball forward in the third quarter. The volume of numbers behind the ball had something to do with that but it created an opportunity for Matthew Pavlich - in what will be his last game at the ground - to snap a goal. But the lead had drifted out to 40 points at half-time, so after one goal for a half it was an unlikely comeback.
The third quarter did though play out as expected at the start of the game - that the Magpies' forward line would find it difficult to kick a score. After being 40 points up at half-time, they did not kick a goal in the third quarter and the lead was trimmed to 22 points.Â
Jesse White, channelling the look of Swedish soccer striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, followed soon after as Collingwood dumped on five goals in 12 minutes - with Cloke drifting one of those in beautifully from the boundary - to open up a solid 48-point final margin.