As the AFL season comes to a close, the calculations and permutations are taking place for the 9 or 10 teams who are in contention.
Given the openness of 2012 and the legitimate prospect of a team outside the top four doing damage, it’s interesting to look back almost 20 years to a comparable season with an overlooked hard-luck story.
1993 was the most wildly open season in modern history, 12 of the 15 teams won half their games and three and half wins separated first and 12th.
10th of 15 had a points percentage of over 112. It was an insane season where anyone could beat anyone on any given day.
The case in point is the chaotic Cats, Ablett reached 100 goals in 12 and they didn’t even make it.
It was the year before the final eight came in and they finished seventh, despite heading to Perth in the final round and completing the escape from Alcatraz of the early 90s by beating the Eagles on their turf.
At that moment they may well have been the best side in the league, and they were only one and a half games from top spot.
They didn’t make it and they quite rightly earn the title of the best ever team to miss the finals.
I’ll make a wildly speculative call that the final eight may have been brought in the next year because of this simple fact.
They were typical Geelong at times during the season but it may well have been the best suited premiership tilt of the Blight era, as compared to when they played GFs against super teams in the 89 Hawks, the 92 and 94 Eagles and the 95 Blues.
Although by then even Blight’s craziness had been worn out by his team’s craziness and he resigned after the 94 GF for Ayres to take over.
In 1993 the Eagles were taking a premiership hangover sabbatical from complete dominance and North Melbourne weren’t ready yet.
Hawthorn were hanging in on the back of Dunstall and Jarman, which left the definition of upstarts in the ‘Baby Bombers’, who were a team of very good players at the start of their career and a few at the end.
There was a professional Carlton unit that was lined with silk but weren’t the all-conquering unit they were to become in 1995. Then, there was the Adelaide Crows, who got on an almighty roll fuelled by the peak of the first generation stars (McGuinnes, McDermott, A Jarman) and the Godra phenomenon.
The Crows Sunday night win against Collingwood knocked Geelong out of the six, and the Cats never got the chance.
They had themselves to blame. A team has Ablett kick 14 for them and they lose in the legendary Ablett-Salmon shootout? Clearly this team was beyond chaotic, they‘d made enemies with all Victorian supporters when they let the Eagles win the year before.
Despite Ablett’s pyrotechnics, they were still suffering post-event-trauma up until round 16 when they took on a Lockett-less and 12th placed-bound St Kilda.
In a sure sign of the apocalypse St Kilda without Lockett kicked 27 goals and won by 71 points.
More bizarrely they allowed the long-forgotten Gordon Fode to have 14 shots at goal (5.9). The Fode demolition was a turning point as they now sat 10th and were effectively out of finals calculations.
In the normal set of circumstances, the following six weeks becomes the most astonishing though overlooked run to a finals series by a team ever, but as it falls in the Geelong 1989-1994 timeline it provokes nothing more than sitcom canned laughter.
Round 17 – the Cats outlast an at the time fifth placed and quite adequate Collingwood side that finished with a record that would have it playing finals in just about any year of the eight.
Round 18 – The second placed North Melbourne were on top most of the year and were about to become the team of the 90s, though with Carey injured that Cats annihilated them by 94 points. Ablett 10 goals.
Round 19 – As all others fell around them Hawthorn sat atop the ladder going into round 19. Not for long. The Cats took them apart by 82 points. Ablett 8 goals.
Round 20 – Bye (there was a bye in 1993 and in fact each team only played 20 matches, further adding to this Haley’s Comet of footy seasons).
Round 21 – Essendon had now taken top spot, and surprise, surprise, they took on the Cats. On the back of Hocking/Barnes in the middle Geelong run away by 32 points.
Round 22 – Fourth placed defending premiers the West Coast Eagles take on the Cats in Perth, the Eagles playing with incentive of a home final. Geelong pull away to win by 20 points.
So in the space of five games they knock off 5 teams who were sitting in the top five.
They knock off two consecutive teams on top, another that was on top for the rest of the year (North) and then the toughest task in football; a win in Perth.
It’s the most incredible never-spoken about run in the history of the league. And they didn’t play finals.
If the final eight was brought in 12 months earlier, the Cats finish seventh and take on second placed Carlton who had squeaked by against wooden-spooner Sydney by a point the week before.
My money is on the Cats, and my money is on them right through September. 1993 is the great lost year in Geelong history, where they mucked around for most of the season then nonchalantly blasted away at the top teams in the toughest run home imaginable.
With the final eight that was introduced the next season, Essendon would now have had to contend with the most in-form team in the league that had comfortably beaten them a few weeks prior.
Every team in the 1993 Finals dodged an almighty bullet with Geelong missing out, Ablett fresh and at his best, in the permanent full forward role along with a slew of stars at or near best (Couch, Bairstow, Hocking, Hinkley, Brownless, Riccardi and Stoneham at his pre-broken leg peak).
Geelong were closer to a flag in 1993 when they didn’t play Finals as opposed to 1994 when they made the grand final – Essendon fans should thank Geelong every time they remember 1993.
Link to the 1993 ladder.
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