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As entertaining as their win was on Friday night, Geelong Football Club are standing on the edge of a muddy slope, unsure whether they’ll slip.
Right now, their stars look faded.
As the television commentary pointed out, Jonathan Brown’s retirement this week left only seven triple-premiership players in the AFL. All of them took the field on Friday as Geelong took on Essendon: ex-Cat Paul Chapman was the only one in red and black.
Andrew Mackie and Corey Enright still rebound out of defence. James Kelly and Jimmy Bartel sometimes join them there, with stints through the midfield. Steve Johnson and Joel Selwood lurk forward or at the centre bounce.
Other long-serving premiership players include Tom Lonergan, Travis Varcoe, Harry Taylor, Tom Hawkins, and Matty Stokes.
All are highly experienced, resilient and skilled, but only Selwood, Hawkins, Varcoe and perhaps Taylor are closer to the middle than the end of their careers.
Over the past couple of months, Geelong’s stars have struggled for their accustomed impact on games. Something hasn’t been right. The fluency that characterised their play has come in patches.
For chunks of games, the Cats have been a joy to watch. For other chunks they’ve gone completely missing.
“I reckon there’s some people lining up to call the end,” said coach Chris Scott after the game, of an era that began when the Cats swept all before them on their march to the flag in 2007.
I don’t want be part of that media dynamic, of hacks pumping out arguments as cheap and disposable and deliberately monochrome as the newsprint that bears them.
I was a fan of the blue and white hoops long before I was a footy writer, and while the latter job means these days I try to keep both eyes open, I still have enormous respect and affection for these Cats: true champions who have carried themselves with honour and dignity.
There is a maudlin media obsession with the end of things: cheering on some sad moment when greatness subsides back into the swamp of mediocrity, and we can all sigh at the crushing inevitability of grim fate.
Something is no sooner there, shining newly bright in the moment of its ascendancy, ringing out over the theatre stalls, than it is fading and dying. Attack, sustain, decay, release.
Well, bugger that. Rather than spending half their careers counting down to their retirements, I’ll choose to enjoy watching the players I respect for as long as they choose to continue. Dustin Fletcher’s career will outlive most of us, so there’s no point making assumptions.
An obsession with endings, though, isn’t the same as wondering what’s clearly amiss with Geelong this season.
Carlton and Essendon are sides that any 2014 contender should be able to put away, but Geelong have needed last-minute goals and plenty of luck to get past both. They challenged Fremantle and Port Adelaide for a while but lost comfortably in the end; struggled past Richmond and were trashed in Sydney.
Persisting with their open and fast-moving game plan, Geelong have looked good in attack but been vulnerable in defence. Before their Essendon game they were fifth in the league for scores kicked, but sixth for scores conceded. They’re high in the top eight with a percentage barely over a hundred.
I’m not one who believes that a footballer’s body explodes as soon as he leaves his 20s, but perhaps some older players can’t quite match the intensity of defensive running they once produced. Teams on the counter have torn through the Cats.
The veteran set of Bartel, Enright, Johnson and Kelly have been influential for bursts in certain games, but drifted away or been error-prone in others. Johnson especially has veered between bright flares of genius and doing flapping circle-work like a decapitated pullet.
The team carved open by the Gold Coast in Round 14 was the least convincing Geelong I can remember since the build-up years before 2007. Pass after pass missed, tackles didn’t stick, fumbles cost possession. The old heads were as culpable as the new.
Pervading it all was an attitude of surprise: like they couldn’t actually accept that this was happening, and all they needed to do was wait for the universe’s correct balance to reassert itself.
For so long they were the side that came back. “They are the ghosts that walk,” crackled the radio when Geelong looked to have stolen St Kilda’s lead in the dying moments of a 2010 final.
That goal was denied by an umpire in the end, but the call summed up the Cats: a reputation for not caring what sort of lead you had, because they always thought they could knock it off.
But that kind of confidence carries its own dangers. When in front, the Cats may feel that they should be. When behind, they expect that any moment they’ll click into gear. This year, when their comebacks haven’t happened, they’ve looked a little lost.
Mental weariness is as likely a factor as physical. Does a 32-year-old who has enjoyed such career highs have the same hunger as someone a decade younger? Might that player not relax, see his last couple of years as an epilogue?
Joe Daniher’s puppyish joy when he kicked a goal for Essendon isn’t something I associate with Geelong this year. Perhaps the younger Cats feel constrained around their elders. From those elders I’ve seen professionalism, but not naked enthusiasm.
Of course this is pure speculation. You can’t just apply a particular mood to several dozen complex individuals. But group dynamics do exist, and a perception by some can lead to a corresponding mood being created.
And I know the questions are unfair. We keep talking about the Geelong of the past, but that Geelong is of the past. Of the 22 who played in the 2007 premiership, four are now at other clubs and 11 have retired.
Ten changes to the senior team in the last couple of weeks don’t help. There’s a new generation of Cats who’ll come good down the track. This side may settle over coming weeks and get back to their early-season form.
But if I’ve had moments of frustration this season, it’s only because I’ve been spoiled for so long. A few hours after Friday’s game it registered: Geelong’s time at the top has gone on eight long years, and been quite some ride. As someone who grew up with the outrageous talent and fragility of the 1990s, it has been a privilege to see this side become respected across the league for being daring and resolute.
Whatever pronouncements people want to make about historical closing dates, it’s the quality of the era that actually matters. And who knows: those triple-premiership players might well surprise me and the rest of us a couple more times yet. They’ve sure as hell done it enough already.