They say cats have nine lives, and the Geelong Cats look to have spent their last in season 2015.

A dramatic overhaul of the list was in prospect, but Geelong, as they’ve done so well over the past decade, look set to take a different path to the rest of the competition in an effort to stave off the list management reaper.

The timing of Hawthorn’s three-peat couldn’t have been any more awkward for Geelong. The Cats, so often referred to as the greatest team of the modern era, have been overtaken.

For a team so accustomed to success, and one which has defied the pushes and pulls of list equalisation for close to a decade, Geelong are loitering with intent heading into a busy few weeks on the AFL calendar. It comes at the tail-end of a patch of good performances reserved for the best teams in league history.

Between 2004 and 2014, Geelong made the finals 10 of 11 seasons, with a dip in 2006 almost costing coach Mark Thompson his job. There was serious talk that Thompson, who had taken over the top job at the turn of the century, would be cut loose, a failure, for not taking a Geelong list loaded with high draft picks to a premiership.

Fortunately for Cats fans, and the organisation more generally, the higher-ups stuck fat, and Geelong went on to win a flag in the following year. The 2007 Cats were a running, gunning, attacking machine, putting up 17 scores in excess of 100, including a mammoth 222-65 victory over Richmond in Round 6, on their way to 18 wins and a 44-year, drought-breaking premiership.

They took a claw hammer to runner-up Port Adelaide in the grand final, setting a VFL/AFL record for victory margin (119 points) in kicking the third highest score in the history of the last Saturday in September.

Not content with 18 wins (three more than the second placed Port Adelaide) in 2007, the Cats arguably became the best single-season team in the modern era the following year.

Thompson’s team reeled off an obscene 5016 handballs (that’s 200 per game, everybody) as they sprinted up the gut like a cavalcade of NFL running back. In a lot of ways, the Cats changed the game: they bought a run-and-carry style that was pure balls-to-the-wall attack.

Twenty-one wins from 22 games was how the line read at the conclusion of the home-and-away season. It was remarkable – historically anomalous.

At this point, Geelong’s playing stocks included Gary Ablett Jr, James Bartel, Joel Corey, Corey Enright, James Kelly, Paul Chapman, Steve Johnson, and a young Joel Selwood. They were stacked in a way that no team around them was stacked, all owed to a very good stretch of drafting in the early days of the Thompson era.

Those foundational players all came to the club around the same time as Thompson, and built a core that served Geelong well throughout this entire period. It meant that the Cats didn’t need to strike gold at the draft, or mortgage their future to bring in players to help prolong their success.

There was, indeed, a steady stream of new additions in the early part of their run: Travis Varcoe and Matthew Stokes in 2005, Joel Selwood and Tom Hawkins in 2006, Harry Taylor in 2007, Steve Motlop in 2008. All played significant, early roles for the Cats, and all came through the draft.

Despite the strength of their list, and the incredible run that was their home-and-away season, Geelong didn’t convert their historic dominance into a flag in 2008 – running into a plucky Hawthorn and their new coach Alastair Clarkson (who had as many coach of the year awards then as he does now) in the grand final.

Clarkson developed a defensive strategy, dubbed Clarko’s Cluster but otherwise known as the zone defence that is now so common place in the AFL. It meant Geelong couldn’t burn off their opponents as they had all year, because, well, they didn’t really have an opponent.

The Hawks may have also been keen to assist in the movement of the ball from Geelong’s 50-metre arc to the goal-line: there were 11 rushed behinds, which simply doesn’t happen these days.

That game started a historic rivalry, albeit a lopsided one. But that’s another story for another time.

Geelong’s list propelled them to another flag in 2009, and they got close again in 2010, running into the full frontal press of Michael Malthouse’s Collingwood. Coach Thompson left, citing burn out, while Gary Ablett took a lucrative offer to join the then-new Gold Coast Suns.

Down their mastercoach and best player, and reaching that historic tipping point with an ageing list, the Cats were expected to begin a steady descent from their heady heights.

The Cats had turned to a relatively untried Chris Scott as their head coach. Scott bought an emphasis on contested play, and reduced the Cats’ tendency to use the corridor at all costs; he also bought Geelong their third flag in five seasons.

They beat Malthouse’s Pies in the 2011 decider – those Pies also have claims on being known as the best single-season team of the modern era.

Footy isn’t supposed to be like this at the highest level. Geelong won three premierships in five years, accumulating 93 wins from 110 regular season games, for a strike rate of 85 per cent. You aren’t supposed to be that successful for that long.

Seasons 2012 through 2014 were somewhat patchy, despite 50 more regular season wins for a more paltry 76 per cent winning percentage. However, their record in finals dropped to 1-5, with a preliminary final loss to Hawthorn in 2013 (which broke a run of 11 straight victories which started in 2009: the famous Kennett’s Curse) seemingly the football equivalent of a dead cat bounce.

They ended the 2014 season in third spot, on 17 wins. But that finishing position belied their underlying ability: the Cats’ pure offensive and defensive output was worth just 12 wins, with the Cats getting to the top of the ladder by virtue of a historically ridiculous 7-0 in games decided by less than two goals. It was why I picked them to fall out of the eight in 2015 (just don’t remind me who I thought had a shot of making it in) – and so it was.

Geelong ended 2015 with a winning record – 11-1-9-1, with that final one the abandoned Round 14 game – but once again modestly outperformed their percentage of 101 per cent. Among many, their biggest concern was through the middle of the ground, with Geelong’s young players not at the same level as those who took the team to three flags.

That’s harsh, and to be fair Geelong’s midfield group from 2007 to 2011 was one of the best in the AFL era. But the facts are there for all to see.

For a team built on midfield strength during their premiership years, it’s quite amazing how far the Cats have fallen around the ball.

Since peaking at a contested possession differential of +11.0 in 2008, Geelong’s work winning the disputed ball has fallen below even the average teams in the AFL, hitting a decade-low of -5.7 in 2015. Similarly, they lost the clearance count by an average of 5.3 in 2015, compared to +3.4 in 2008. When charted, the decline is quite remarkable.

Geelong had six players that won two or more clearances per game in 2015 – the lowest number in the league. A number of teams have less than 10 players that can boast that marker, including West Coast, Fremantle, Sydney and Adelaide

What’s the difference between them and Geelong? All have very large clearance differentials, owing to a depth of ball-winning talent through the middle of the ground. The Cats have Selwood, and maybe Josh Caddy on a good day, but that’s about it.

Their recent drafting has not yielded the kind of inside talent the Cats had grown accustomed to, and as those veterans have aged they have, naturally, drifted to the flanks and outside positions. I’ve said this on a number of occasions, but it’s worth repeating, a midfield made up of Selwood, Caddy, Cam Guthrie, Mitch Duncan, Jackson Thurlow and Jordan Murdoch projects as mediocre at best.

That’s how the system is supposed to work though, right? Geelong, by virtue of their decade of success, have picked lower in the draft than the rest of the league for a sustained period of time. That has to catch up eventually.

This lack of midfield potency is a big problem for the bookends of the ground, because it means the opponent has first use of the ball. It’s meant that Tom Hawkins – a genuine A-grade key forward – hasn’t been able to use his size and strength to out muscle opponents one-on-one.

Hawkins took 2.53 contested marks per game in 2015, running second to Gold Coast’s Tom Lynch (2.55) and the most of his career to date. But he also took just 2.4 uncontested marks per game, ranked 488th in the league. Of the 38 players that took more than 1.5 marks inside 50 and kicked more than 1.5 goals per game in 2015, Hawkins took the fourth-least uncontested marks. The contested marking king, Travis Cloke, took 4.5 uncontested marks per game.

Part of that may also be his supporting cast: Josh Walker is no more than an average key position player, while Mitch Clark, traded in to play primarily as a forward, missed two thirds of the season. None of Geelong’s ruck set can claim to be ruck-forwards, Johnson (30) and Motlop (26) were second and third in the Cats’ goal-kicking for the year.

Their defence remains stoic, with Tom Lonergan and Harry Taylor one of the better pairings of key defenders in the game. Andrew Mackie and Jake Kolodjashnij are at alternative ends of their career, but offer the same standard of mid-sized defender service at a good enough rate. Corey Enright is Corey Enright.

They’re perhaps one defender short of a set following the retirement of Rivers, and will be looking for one of their youngsters to step up. Their biggest problem as a collective? The ball spent too much time down their end, and came in far too quickly for the set to be anything more than adequate.

A huge part of Geelong’s premiership success was their list, with a concentration of talent that only the current Hawthorn side in terms of overall quality can match. But it’s meant the list has aged – like fine wine, most certainly – and has led to a significant pruning at the conclusion of the 2015 season. Geelong have already opened up eight spots on their list, and that number could grow as we get close to list lodgement deadline number one on October 30 (one week after the conclusion of the trade and free agency period).

Kelly, Johnson and Stokes were delisted at the conclusion of the year, with a deliberate use of the term so each can explore their options for 2016 and beyond.

Johnson is the only player that is expected to continue his career, with the late-blooming Stokes and 32-year-old Kelly only marginal propositions for all but one or two clubs at the top of the tree looking for some extra nous. Johnson likely falls into that category, too, although what we’re hearing is that he’ll join a team and transition into a coaching role over the course of 2016.

Veteran signings Hamish McIntosh and Jared Rivers retired throughout the year and at the conclusion respectively, while three other bit-part players have also pulled up stumps. There’s an expectation that a few more delistings will follow.

This is all very purposeful. Geelong are expected to be a massive player in the upcoming trade and free agency window, which opens with the restricted free agent offer period this Friday (October 9). And the Cats are being incredibly deliberate with the players they are targeting, which is both a product of good fortune, but also taking advantage of the opportunities presented. Let’s save the big fish until last.

Geelong appear intent on securing Lachie Henderson from Carlton, and Henderson seems pretty intent to play anywhere but at the navy blues in 2016. There was a very public divorce with a few rounds to go earlier this year, after which Henderson nominated the Cats as his preferred destination. What’s an excellent way to ensure your old club will be amicable and helpful in helping you get to the new destination? Walking out is nearly at the bottom of the list.

It will be club number three for Henderson, which is a lot for a player that’s just 26 years old. After he played out his rookie years as a Lion, homesickness bought him back to Victoria. It never quite worked out for Henderson, given he only managed one full season through form and injury.

Yet Carlton think he’s worth a first round pick, despite the fact he’s averaged just a shade over a goal a game in the years he played as a key forward, even though he’s effectively been the only option at Carlton over those years. Yeah, Carlton are going to make this hard.

Henderson will be an interesting piece for the Cats, given he could play both forward and back and has the potential to provide above average production at either end. He’ll likely settle as a foil for Hawkins at the Cattery, playing as a true centre half-forward and opening up some space for his partner to go to work. There’s no doubt the deal will get done, and surely it will be something closer to Geelong’s second round pick (currently pick 27) than their first rounder (currently pick nine).

Scott Selwood’s name has been bandied about all year, with the West Coast vice-captain seemingly out of favour in coach Adam Simpson’s new-look midfield. Selwood has buttered his bread as a tagging, inside midfielder, with limited range on the outside and a tendency to make quick, but rash, decisions with the ball in hand. In a system that demands precision, he’s not likely to get a look in unless there’s some dramatic improvement in his disposal.

As a restricted free agent, Selwood can receive a qualifying offer from a suitor – Geelong is the only club that’s been mentioned – which the Eagles can then match and trade, or allow him to walk and gamble on compensation.

Given his age, and a likely at-market salary that would put him a little bit above average, Selwood may garner an end-of-second-round compensatory selection. For West Coast, as the runner-up for 2015, that would be anywhere from 37th to 40th, depending on how many other picks are doled out by the AFL commission.

For a 25-year-old taken with West Coast’s second round pick (pick 22) in 2007 that’s played 25 out of a possible 47 games under a new coach, that’s probably a fair return. The question will be whether the Eagles hierarchy want to keep him around as a depth player, or are happy to let him walk. Selwood’s wishes figure heavily in this, too – he has publicly stated that he wants to stay at the Eagles.

Selwood would add a hard edge to a Geelong midfield crying out for one, complimenting his brother’s in-and-under work but not quite matching him on the outside. He also gives the Cats a bonafide tagging option, freeing up the likes of Guthrie and Murdoch to play more in the way they like.

In recent days there’s been a bit of talk floating around that Gold Coast’s Zac Smith may look for a new home in Victoria, after being selected as one of Gold Coast’s original players in 2010. The ruckman has never really gotten going at the Suns, missing big chunks of playing time due to injury in every year bar 2011. It appears he’s been overtaken by Tom Nicholls, although Nicholls himself only made it on the park for 15 games this season.

Smith is a big unit, and would give the Cats a genuine two-pronged ruck set in combination with Rhys Stanley, who spent significant parts of the year on the sidelines. That would allow Mark Blicavs to re-join the midfield group, or indeed spend a bit more time either forward or back, such is his flexibility. The Suns may play hard ball, though, given the prospective move of Charlie Dixon to Port Adelaide (although Matthew Lobbe may be part of that deal).

That’s three contributors, all of which would come in and be expected to play full seasons at Geelong in 2016. They’re all 25 years of age, fitting into the prime age bracket that we’re told is oh-so pivotal to success. All told, it’s reasonable to assume they’ll cost Geelong mid-tier draft picks, and perhaps a depth player should the pick stocks run dry.

But that ignores the Crow in the room.

Patrick Dangerfield has stated his intent to move to Geelong, a decision which I still maintain was not the optimal one from a football perspective. I’ve talked about number 32 all year – you can read about where I think he fits in best from a football perspective, and my thoughts on the decision.

The decision has been made, and now what follows is how to make it all happen.

Dangerfield is a slam dunk proposition wherever he ends up, but at Geelong he’s the kind of foundation-shifting piece that could propel their whole list forward. Joel Selwood becomes the Rory Sloane type – a battering ram with a single-minded objective to move the ball forward. Caddy can play a true rover role, using his wide frame to muscle his way to the ball at ground level and feed it out to the running Dangerfield and Selwood. Guthrie and the rest of Geelong’s outside-inside midfield can keep their noses clean, with the knowledge that someone else will be winning the ball for them.

It’s a team-changing, direction-altering play. But the deal still has to get done.

As a restricted free agent, the Cats will be required to table with the AFL a qualifying offer for their number one target, which the Crows have 72 footy hours (excluding this weekend) to decide whether to match – we’ve been told they’ll match it.

If the Crows match the offer, Dangerfield remains a contracted Adelaide Crows player, until the end of the trade period. Between the match date and the end of the trade period, Geelong and Adelaide can enter a trade to shift Dangerfield to Geelong for some form of compensation.

This is where things get interesting, both for the Cats and for Adelaide. By matching, the Crows are giving up the guarantee of a top tier free agency pick, which would come immediately after their first picks in the draft (which is 13, so pick 14) for the right to enter into negotiations with the Cats. Crows bosses have made it very clear they are looking after their club’s best interest, and believe the negotiation path is the one that will deliver the best deal.

That means they’re chasing at least Geelong’s first draft selection in 2015, which will come in at pick number nine. That’s decent compensation for losing your best player, sure, but it’s not likely to be enough – particularly as Dangerfield’s agent Paul Connors has so publicly, shamelessly even, begged the Crows to roll over and take the guaranteed compensation. Adelaide hold the cards, and will drive a bargain.

This all has an air of inevitability about it, something that I should have paid more attention to earlier in the year. But where the interest now lies is what Geelong will give up to secure their man.

There’s been ridiculous suggestions of what would amount to draft tampering by some of the game’s supposed pre-eminent minds; that would see a wink-wink player-for-draft pick deal take place between the Cats and Crows in return for Adelaide choosing not to match Geelong’s deal. Or, for example, Geelong agreeing to swap their first pick for Adelaide’s compensation pick in exchange for a no-match.

Given the league vets and approves every trade before it is sanctioned, that’s not going to happen, plain and simple. The AFL has copped it recently for integrity-related issues, and anything that looks like a wink-wink deal will be shot down.

What’s more likely is that Geelong will be asked, politely I’m sure, to give up their first round selection in 2015, and their first round selection in 2016, as the primary means of exchange for Dangerfield. There could be other consideration thrown in – for the love of god don’t say steak knives – to help grease the wheels, but as far as the deal breaker goes, that’s what I’d be looking for.

And you know what? That could suit Geelong quite nicely. The four pieces they’re seeking to add are all prime-age players, and are size appropriate pegs for the numerous holes that have opened up in their list in recent years. Henderson fills the Mooney-sized forward line void, Scott Selwood the fourth inside midfield option, and Smith a genuine option in the ruck to help give the new look midfield first use. And, well, Dangerfield can be anything and everything.

There’s also the spectre of a healthy Daniel Menzel, who has yet to provide any lasting production for the Cats. Add in a healthy Rhys Stanley and Mitch Clark, and all of a sudden this team looks completely different to its 2015 iteration.

Do Geelong feel comfortable punting on the draft for the next couple of years, believing that the additions that they’re seeking to make are enough to re-open their slammed-shut premiership window? Could the Cats, who looked certain to have lost the last of their nine lives in 2015, end up with a fresh start by virtue of a few flicks of Brian Cook’s wrist?

The answer to both of these questions, at least at this point in time and at face value, appears to be a resounding yes.

Or, are Geelong merely topping up with bit-part players, hoping that a midfield made of a core of Selwood and Dangerfield is enough to make it back into the eight? This is certainly a live possibility. Geelong will still lack the outside polish of those teams around the top of the ladder, while its forward line all of a sudden looks a touch cumbersome, particularly if the Guthrie, Duncan and Murdoch can’t deliver the ball to advantage.

This could go off like fireworks. It could also lead to an implosion.

Geelong’s nine straight winning seasons match the same nine lives a cat is thought to possess. With the addition of a few talented players to augment a middling roster, there might be enough in this group of players to earn a handful more. What they do with them will be a fascination heading into 2016.