Tickets may be selling out fast, it may be a top-two clash, Seven may be showing it live, and it may be the talk of Melbourne, but Cats coach Mark Thompson insists Friday night’s Geelong-Collingwood blockbuster is just another game for the reigning premiers.
“We understand who we’re playing and how great it is to have Geelong and Collingwood on a Friday night in Melbourne at the ‘G, two very good teams in good form, but to us it’s not the blockbuster,” Thompson said.
He continued: “It’s about getting getting down to another week’s work and doing what we can to outsmart them and outplay them. In that regard the ‘blockbuster’ doesn’t mean that much to us”
And Thompson is right. The fans and media may be getting excited about Friday night’s game (with over 90,000 expected at the MCG), but the reality is it is only Round Nine and for the Cats it is just another game.
I don’t mean to dull the party (and I honestly can not wait to witness Friday night’s match) but there’s no need for the Cats, or even the Pies for that matter, to get too carried away with the game.
Sure, they’ll both want to win but as last year’s Round 14 clash between the Cats and St Kilda (who were both unbeaten going into that game) tells you, premierships aren’t won in July, or May for that matter.
Perhaps the only thing which will be won on Friday night, besides for the four points of course, will be premiership favouritism. But as last year shows, that doesn’t mean a lot.
In fact, looking back two years, you may recall Collingwood thrashing a previously unbeaten Geelong by 86 points in this corresponding fixture in Round Nine in 2008. At the time, it seemed a significant victory.
Retrospectively its only significance was it was Geelong’s only loss for the season all the way up until the Grand Final. Collingwood meanwhile went onto finish eighth on the ladder and didn’t make much of an impact on the finals.
So when Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse was asked about Friday night’s blockbuster he echoed Thompson’s sentiment when he said: “It’s just another game of football in Round Nine.”
Malthouse added: “Every week is a challenge. It doesn’t matter who you play in AFL footy, every week presents its idiosyncracies and every week presents its new challenges.”
Now, while the jargon of AFL coaches can get dull and repetitive, their sentiment in this respect shouldn’t be forgotten.
It will be a big week ahead of Friday night’s blockbuster as tickets sell like hotcakes in Melbourne. And as Justin Rodski explained on The Roar yesterday, the game will have a ‘finals-type build-up’. Both teams do seem to be genuine 2010 premiership contenders.
But when the final siren sounds on Friday evening we shouldn’t get too carried away with the result.
The winner may appear a step closer to the premiership, but as Round Eight showed us, AFL footy continually surprises us and turns our impressions upside down.
And, of course, there’s a lot of footy to be played between Round Nine and the final Saturday in September.
So let’s just enjoy Friday night for what it is – hopefully a brilliant contest between two teams in form and close to the peak of their powers – and not jump to too many conclusions with so much water left to go under the bridge.
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