Geelong's smash-mouth stylings paying dividends, for now

There were legitimate questions hanging over the reconstructed Geelong Cats coming into the year, and after a surging start, many have been answered. But one remains: can this team win the 2016 premiership?

The Cats have romped to a 6-1 record, with an astronomical percentage of 171.5 that would place them in the upper echelons of home-and-away season marks in modern AFL times.

Geelong are playing a different style to most everyone else in the competition – using their strengths to create a competitive advantage that has, to this point, seen them take all that have come before them.

Putting them into the ‘genuine flag contender’ conversation could be premature, and when you consider the Cats have played a relatively soft slate of games to start the year, there are still some reasons to doubt what we’re seeing unfold.

But even when the strength, or lack thereof, of Geelong’s schedule is taken into account, they are still the best team in the league through seven rounds.

With one-third of the home-and-away season in the books, things are unfolding just about as well as Geelong administrators and fans alike would have hoped.

We’ve checked in on Geelong twice in the past six months. In October, the Cats were a fading dynasty, seeking to circumvent the cycle through trade and free agency. The eagles all landed, including a former Eagle, and so the question in March was how does it all fit together.

You could say I had my doubts that Geelong’s desire to double down on heft and height would prove effective. They were tall, slow and with problems around the ball that weren’t going to be magic’d away with the injection of one of the best one-on-one players in the competition.

Their back six wouldn’t hold up against the repeat entries and ground ball play of the best scorers in the league, and a forward line made up of inflexible talls would result in high-quality rebound opportunities for the opposition.

Well, here we are, and those perceived flaws with the Cats and their playing stocks have become their competitive advantage. Geelong are playing smash-mouth football, throwing their weight around and forcing the opposition to play their way. It has its advantages, as a six-win start to the year would lead you to believe, but as ever it creates some challenges.

At a headline level, Geelong’s problems at the coalface were clear: a contested possession differential that peaked at the back end of the last decade slowly decayed, year by year, until the Cats became one of the worst ball-winning sides in the competition. Their contested possession differential of -5.7 per game was ranked 13th in the league, while their clearance differential – a key component of the contested possession counts – was flat-out last.

This stat is over-used, and is not as meaningful as most media members would have you believe. But for Geelong, it provides an interesting frame of reference into the areas of their game that have improved this season.

The big, lumbering bookends have given Geelong a leg up in a league that is getting smaller and quicker by the week. The Cats have been near-impervious in marking contests to this point in the year, with their ability to win the ball when it comes in high in 2016 unprecedented in recent times.

After seven games, Geelong are third in the competition for contested marks per game, with 13.4 a game – just a shade behind joint leaders West Coast and Sydney (13.5). That’s good, and is to be expected when you consider the Cats have played with height across the ground every week. But what is most remarkable is that Geelong have a contested mark differential of +7.3 per game. The next most is Sydney at +3.9 per game. A contested mark differential of +7.3 is off the charts – the league average for positive differentials over the past 15 years is +0.5 per game.

This is a product of their playing stocks, but also the way that Geelong are moving the ball, particularly from half back. Most sides are looking to move the ball quickly, either by kick or handball, once they gain possession in the back half of the ground. Not Geelong. Instead, they are content to slow down the pace of the game, allow numbers to build and mismatches to be created, before kicking long to a contest.

The congested nature of Geelong’s play creates plenty of wide open space though, and the Cats have the players to make the most of it. Steven Motlop is having a breakout year, and is second at the Cattery for metres gained per game. The oft-maligned Mitch Duncan seems to be relishing more time on the outside, while the dynamic duo of Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood seem to be free far too often for players of their calibre. The system works, even though conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t.

This isn’t just a ball movement thing though, Geelong’s numbers paint a similar picture at the pointy ends of the ground. The Cats have taken a league-leading 17.3 marks inside 50 per game, and conceded a paltry 7.7 marks inside 50 per game. That is another historically crazy differential, and one that points to a team in tune with its strengths.

Tom Hawkins is leading all comers with 27 marks inside 50 on the season, or around four per game. Unlike many other key forwards, Hawkins has been taking most of his marks in the pockets, rather than in the most efficient zone in the centre corridor. This has meant he’s kicked 17.11 on the year (and presumably has had some misses, #freethestats), compared to the more hefty goal totals of players living closer to the centre corridor.

Behind the ball, Geelong’s opponents have had a tough time taking marks inside 50 because the ball simply hasn’t been travelling in there very often. The Cats have allowed opponents into the scoring zone just 43 times per game, around ten less than the competition average and only three more times than the practitioners of medieval torture, the Western Bulldogs (39.4). When adjusted for this, the Cats are still among the stingiest aerial sides in the competition.

For this they can thank Lachie Henderson, who has taken to the role of third defender and occasional +1 like a duck to water – even though he is still prone to the odd mistake or four with the ball in hand. Henderson’s best ability has always been marking the high ball, and it has been put to great effect this season. After a slow start in his first two games, the import has been solid for the Cats and allowed the older guys – Harry Taylor, Corey Enright and Tom Lonergan – to focus on beating their men.

Those marking stats have been the catalyst behind Geelong’s contested possession turnaround. The Cats have moved from a deficit of 5.7 per game to a surplus of 8.3 per game so far in 2016 – the second biggest gain for a side that had a negative record in the ball-winning column last season (GWS are first).

But more than that, there is a clear hard edge to this Geelong team. Dangerfield, the AFL’s Russell Westbrook, is the avatar for the way this team is collectively approaching its football this year.

We don’t need to talk about how good Dangerfield is at football – first off, we did last week, but second of all, everyone knows it because he plays in a way that you can’t help but notice him.

Before the season got underway, I questioned whether his insertion would be enough to fix Geelong’s problems at the contest. He’s contributing, given he’s won 15 contested possessions per game, but he has seemingly inspired the rest of his side to play more like he does.

It shows up in a couple of areas. The Cats are now winning six more clearances than their opponent per game, which is a stark improvement from their -5.3 per game outcome from last year (it is again the second biggest increase behind the Giants). Geelong have landed nine more tackles per game than their opponents, despite having possessed the ball for an average of 46 per cent of their games – a league high.

Playing hard is fine, but it’s costing the Cats free kicks. Despite employing the human head-high Joel Selwood as their captain – he has an individual free-kick differential of +9 on the season, the biggest in the league – Geelong have given away 30 more free kicks than they have earned themselves in the first seven rounds of the season. There are plenty of culprits: Mitch Duncan, Hawkins, Dangerfield, Rhys Stanley, Steven Motlop and Henderson have all given away a high number of frees, or have a high negative differential – Motlop has conceded 11 frees, and been granted just two himself.

On Selwood, I had doubts as to whether he would continue to play at his lofty level after some niggling, fatigue-centric injuries cropped up in the offseason. It is fair to say I was wrong. The addition of Dangerfield has done what everyone else thought it would – rejuvenate Selwood, and allow him to play more on the outside. He’s averaging 15 uncontested possessions per game, the most since 2010, while also recording eight clearances a game (second to Carlton’s Patrick Cripps). He is using his legs more, running off of the back of setpiece plays, and being more of a link-up player when he’s not winning the ball on his own. Dangerfield’s presence can absolutely be credited for that.

Geelong’s ruck group is also significantly improved, and I credit former Sun Zac Smith for the unit’s revival. Smith came to the Cats for two third-round picks (that the Suns ended up passing on, just quietly) a broken, beaten, back-up. He has instead given Geelong a perfect yin to Rhys Stanley’s yang, and while this ruck group will never be the best in the AFL, it is a step up from the tyre fire used last season.

Mark Blicavs still goes third man up too often – the eye test tells me it is both predictable and ineffective – but on aggregate, this is a negative turned positive. Between the three of them, Geelong have two serviceable ruck men, which is fine given the play of Dangerfield and Selwood.

Smith has been a very useful change up in Geelong’s forward line, too, and would be well above a goal a game were it not for some bad kicking. His size and overhead strength is overwhelming for all but the biggest and best key defenders, and they are often pre-occupied with stopping the contested marking prowess of Tom Hawkins. The height, despite my pre-season reservations, works on many levels.

But is it sustainable? To this point, the Cats have beaten up on the likes of Brisbane, Essendon, Port Adelaide and the Gold Coast. Patrick Dangerfield beat Hawthorn on his own in Round 1, and while a victory against West Coast over the weekend was meritorious, there is a chance the Eagles are just a middling team this year. Their percentage still pegs them as a 15-win side as things sit now, which is better than most even-minded commentator would have given this group the potential to achieve in March.

The Cats have nearly had a clean sheet by way of injury to best-22 players, with Jackson Thurlow and Mitch Clark the only top liners currently unavailable to injury – and even then, I’m nor certain these two break into the side as it stands. After a couple of years of bad luck, the health worm may have turned for Geelong at just the right time.

However, there are still questions. Given the pace at which Geelong play, their inability to hold the Giants back in Round 2 may be instructive. The Cats want to exert themselves, control the pace of play and pound you into submission; quick teams, like GWS, will have none of that. We will get a window into how this team will fair against fast teams on Friday.

It might not matter though – Geelong’s draw gets more difficult at the midpoint of the season, but then eases back. A run of GWS off six-day break in Round 11, North Melbourne in Round 12, the Western Bulldogs in Round 13, and then St Kilda off their bye in Round 14 looks tough from here, but then it is clear skies to September.

Geelong are almost certainly a top-four finisher from here.

In a year where the race for the premiership looks as wide open as it has for a decade, the Cats are doing it their way. We thought their nine lives were up at the end of last season. We thought wrong.