Geelong and St Kilda players fight for the ball during the AFL 1st Qualifying Final between the Geelong Cats and the St kilda Saints at the MCG. GSP Images
The AFL’s two clear-cut premiership favourites, Geelong and St Kilda, are employing directly opposite policies on player rotation this year. So one wonders which will work and lead them to 2009 glory?
Last weekend was the perfect example of it, as St Kilda took a full-strength team on the taxing journey across the Nullarbor to face the Eagles in Perth, while Geelong elected to rest several key personnel for the trip north to Brisbane.
And this weekend the Cats have given Jimmy Bartel a game off with a hip complaint troubling him.
Geelong though, have been a successful team for the last three seasons, and combined with a few long NAB Cup campaigns, have played the most competitive footy of any of the AFL clubs in the last few years.
It’s a lot of footy and sure to bring with it a couple of niggles which Geelong have moved to address by giving players rests in the last few weeks.
St Kilda on the other hand, are relative newcomers to the ‘success game’, having shot up the ladder late last season, before their undefeated 2009.
Perhaps the Cats have learnt (or been burnt) from their experiences at the top. Last season’s Grand Final failure surely still hurts and much attention will be made at Skilled Stadium to get the side peaking in September rather than Round 15 or Round 16.
And with Geelong and St Kilda dominating on the AFL ladder and practically certain to grab the home ground advantage in the second-chance finals come the end of the season, the Cats really have no incentive to risk players’ fitness.
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon on the other hand, claims he wouldn’t want to mess with form.
“You practice mediocrity and you practice it often, you blink and you’ll find yourself sliding down the ladder,” Lyon said on Wednesday.
And while the Saints coach tries to distance himself from the Cats’ tactic, it’s clear he doesn’t buy into it.
“What Geelong’s doing is irrelevant to us,” Lyon said, before adding, “I think it is disrespectful to the other teams and the competition. You’ve got to understand that if you’re off two or three percent in any game, you’re going to lose that game.”
Whether or not being disrespectful is on the top of Geelong’s list of priorities is doubtful and with the visit of last year’s wooden spooners Melbourne to Skilled Stadium this weekend, perhaps the Cats’ timing is right and they’ll be back on the winners’ list at the end of this round.
The idea of resting players and rotating your squad is quite normal in many other professional sports around the world. You see it a lot in European football and also in international one-day cricket. Yet in Aussie Rules footy, it isn’t the norm.
The assumption that rotating players meddles with form is the basis for this, but the Cats’ experience from last year has perhaps made them re-think that assumption, with keeping players niggle-free and fit a new priority.
In the short-term, Geelong’s form has been affected with losses to the Saints and Brisbane last weekend. The big question is if the Cats can regain that form and get going again.
In the long-term, with Geelong and St Kilda likely to face off at some stage in September, we’ll get a pretty good indication of who got it right.
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