Geelong are the AFL’s ultimate litmus test. They have been for a decade.

If you beat them, chances are you’re quite good. Restrict their ball movement, pressure their kicks, and capitalise on their perpetual weakness in the ruck, and the Cats can look decidedly ordinary. But come unprepared for a tough evening at the office, give them turnovers to feast on and allow them to dictate terms for any length of time, and you’re going to find out the hard way why they’ve been near the top of the ladder for so long.

And so it proved for the Western Bulldogs on Friday night, in what could prove a crucial, season-defining defeat ahead of a nightmare six weeks on the other side of next week’s bye.

It took the Dogs one quarter to find themselves out of the game, two and a half quarters to claw their way back into it, and then five minutes to throw it away again. That’s basically Exhibit A on how you lose to these Cats: give them any kind of fast start, and they’ll almost always be able to get their act together before true disaster strikes.

We’ll get to how poor the Bulldogs were out of the gates, but on the flipside, it’s hard to see the 2022 Cats playing a better 30 minutes. They won near to every contest, feasted on their classic short-kicking game across the half-back line, moved the ball with methodical precision up the ground – every so often punctuated by a hulking contested mark from Rhys Stanley or Mark Blicavs – and had Jeremy Cameron on the end of everything.

I’d argue no player this side of prime Lance Franklin has more natural gifts than Cameron: when in a mood like he was tonight, good luck stopping him. He had three by quarter time, and dished off one more after a mark near goal from an identical spot to where he’d snapped truly only minutes earlier.

Throw in 10 disposals as he roamed from wing to goalsquare, even shifting to the odd centre bounce, and it was hard to spot a single flaw.

It was telling, too, that the Cats’ usual forward structure changed once it became clear that Cameron was On with a capital O. In the past, especially against the Bulldogs, Geelong’s ploy has been to isolate Tom Hawkins deep, and give him the chance to win battles of strength against Alex Keath, Ryan Gardner or someone even smaller.

From midway through the third quarter, though, the Cats would regularly leave 40 metres worth of space running back towards their own goal – space for Cameron, one of if not the quickest key forward in the game, to run his opponent off their legs.

Cameron had three marks inside 50 by quarter time, all from having worked up the field then beaten Tim O’Brien, Keath or Gardner to run back into space. His kicking deserted him a touch in the second and third quarters, but in the first and the last, he was celebrating from the moment leather met boot.

Beating the Dogs at the clearances, too, was crucial: if a side with the defence and forward options of the Cats can break even at the coalface on the Bulldogs, they’ll win every day of the week. Brandan Parfitt and Cameron Guthrie were industrious in close, regularly forcing the ball forward by hook or by crook to exploit their forward line superiority. Stanley, too, soundly beat the in-form Tim English in the ruck all night, while his work around the ground was exceptional. Nights like this make you realise why, at 31 years old and in his seventh year as a Cat, he is still being given every chance to make that ruck spot his own.

Tom Atkins, too, was vitally important, with his bash and crash through the middle often opening up space for teammates. He followed a similar path to Stewart – a mature-age rookie identified through the Cats’ VFL team and a walk-up starter from the moment he was snapped up – and while as inconspicuous as they come – he doesn’t even have the long flowing locks that seem to be mandatory to be a member of Geelong’s back six – he’s become a vital cog in an efficient Cats machine.

The Dogs, meanwhile, couldn’t have played into the Cats’ hands any better. If Luke Beveridge had asked Chris Scott pre-game what he’d like his players to do, it’s doubtful Scott would have asked for much more than long, aimless kicks down the throat of Tom Stewart and Sam De Koning, and then the complete freedom to kick sideways and probe for weaknesses further afield.

When it came time to kick as well, the Dogs resembled deer in the Friday night headlights: it’s hard to remember a worse kicking night for Bailey Dale, with a telegraphed cross-goal pass in the second term broken up for a Tom Hawkins snap to extend the margin to 40 points. It was a goal borne of everything the Bulldogs hadn’t done to pressure the Cats: with the outlet kick denied, Dale chose to bite off a risky pass inboard, and paid the price.

It was as if that moment woke the Dogs up to the fact that their present style suited the Cats perfectly. No doubt Stewart going down with concussion a few minutes after quarter time helped matters, too. Because for the next two and a half quarters, it was all red, white and blue.

Stewart’s absence was telling, not for his intercept marking so much as his precise ball use and ability to find space. De Koning, Jed Bews and a number of others were still on hand to mop up the Dogs’ errant ball use inside 50; but where once they had moved the ball from end to end with ease, now the turnovers started to appear.

Ambitious balls inboard from those with questionable foot skills, far from the clean disposal of Stewart, allowed the Dogs a sniff. Slowly, the goals flowed, too. With Naughton taken to the cleaners by De Koning in a duel we’ll see plenty more of down the line, the Dogs at last began to look for options elsewhere.

Also noticeable was the speed of the Bulldogs’ ball movement in transition. Glacially slow early, as they have been for much of the season, suddenly the likes of Ed Richards and Dale began to take the game on, slicing up the corridor and looking to switch quickly. Not every kick was suddenly a laser, but fortune, as the adage goes, favoured the brave. Ryan Gardner, stoic in defence on Hawkins, made up for one such shank by neutralising a contest from the turnover against the Tomahawk, allowing the cavalry to arrive.

In everything was Tom Liberatore, who at 30 is more crucial to the Dogs than at any stage in his career. The epitome of an intelligent footballer, the speed of his handballs is well known – and oft-derided – but what’s underrated is his speed from hand to foot. Twin snaps in the first and third quarters created goals out of virtually nothing, where just about all of his teammates would have chosen to hand off instead.

He’d end with 30 disposals for his troubles, while only Caleb Daniel and Mitch Duncan finished with more metres gained than his 549. A kick out of a contest to the diving Weightman in the third term was just about the pass of the night.

The Dogs, suddenly well on top across the ground, ended the half with 14 of the last 18 inside 50s, squaring the ledger at 27-apiece. Yes, they’d only managed four goals, but the winds of change were in the air.

It continued in the same vein in the third: the Dogs won 12 of the first 14 inside 50s, and with that territory domination, reduced the margin ever further. In contrast, the Cats began to look, as they have at times this year, stifled, bereft of ideas, and – remarkably considering they have two of the year’s premier forwards in Hawkins and Cameron – incapable of ending their goal drought.

From the five-minute mark of the second term through to three-quarter time, the Cats went goalless, and it wasn’t as if they were regularly spurning gettable chances. When the ball did come in, Cameron, Hawkins and Tyson Stengle took set shots from 50 metres out on the boundary – the task of goaling from there proved beyond even the first quarter’s hot hand.

Frustration at the umpires grew – as rare a sound in football as anything these days is that of a Bulldogs crowd Bronx cheering a free kick – especially after a clumsy high hit from Stanley on Richards that was awarded on the spot rather than downfield for a shot at goal.

It was in the aftermath that Bailey Smith, a dominant factor in the Dogs’ blistering run and carry all quarter, chose to headbutt Zach Tuohy. More on that later.

Bailey Smith of the Bulldogs and Zach Tuohy of the Cats exchange a greeting. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

For all the Dogs’ dominance of the middle two quarters, it’s worth noting that the Cats had been as bad as at any point over the last four years. The amount of dropped marks, poor kicks and loose checking was positively un-Geelong like. But their seven-goal opening term meant that, despite it all, they still led by 11 points at three quarter time, and could regroup without needing to chase the game, as they did against St Kilda and Fremantle of late.

The Dogs continued to challenge, with Naughton finally escaping De Koning to draw the margin back to a goal, but the Cats had already found their bearings. Cool heads would prevail for the remainder of the match, with the Bulldogs simply unable to generate the territory to challenge.

Stanley’s marking became critical, as did they efforts at ground level of Bradley Close and Stengle; each won crucial contests when outnumbered by Dogs on either wing to draw Cats fans to their feet. In the end, though, it was only fitting that it would be Cameron to finish the game off.

The key, in the end, was space. Starting deep inside 50, the Cats’ counterattack offered him a path to lead at the footy ahead of the slower Keath. Stengle obliged, passed accurately, and the rest was history.

Moments later, an apparently wild kick out of congestion from Cam Guthrie was far smarter than it seemed – perfectly directed inboard, the Cats had again manufactured space for Cameron to lead into. This time, it was Ryan Gardner he outpointed. Goal number five.

Number six was his own doing – a chasedown tackle on Richards, a nerveless shot from just inside 50, and surely, the three Brownlow votes.

On a night where only 22 goals were kicked, Cameron had over a quarter of them. He was the dominant force. He was the difference.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the AFL without a dose of controversy, with Smith providing this week’s fuel for the content machine with a headbutt on Zach Tuohy after the three-quarter time siren.

We all know now that the umpires can’t pay free kicks once the horn blows, and it’s surely not a coincidence now that we’ve twice seen dirty acts in that time over the past few weeks. Just like Rhyan Mansell’s elbow to the back of Jack Ginnivan’s head, would Smith had been so reckless if there was the prospect of a free kick hanging over his head?

Obviously, headbutts have no place in the game – it’s the sort of crude violence that sticks out even more than a punch or a bump, even if the consequences probably range from the mild to the moderate – but neither does aggression after the siren. Yes, a bit of push and shove and the odd melee is great theatre, but the line seems to be getting pushed further and further away from where it needs to be.

I’d argue Smith should get two weeks – he’ll probably only get one, given Tuohy walked away and played out the remainder of the match (and has already begun honouring his commitment to the Players Code). Under the rules, a headbutt can be graded by Match Review Officer Michael Christian, meaning it probably won’t see the harsher sanctions of the Tribunal.

The second week, though, should be given for the sheer idiocy of the act, and the lack of any other consequences for it after the siren. If we’re unwilling to allow free kicks to be paid for it – and let’s face it, a free to the Cats inside the Dogs’ attacking 50 would have been about as useful as a screen door on a submarine – then the post-match consequences for the player should be bumped up as a deterrent.

Was it a good match? It was certainly exciting for large parts in the second half, while the quality was a notch below last week’s classic in this timeslot between Richmond and Sydney. We probably don’t learn any more about these two sides, either.

The Dogs are either going to scrape into the finals in seventh or eighth, or miss out – but something radical would need to change for them to go any deeper than that into September, especially with a nightmare draw coming up.

The Cats’ best remains good enough to beat most sides going around, but while they sit fourth for now with another impeccable 8-4 record, you can bet the cream of the crop this year will – and have – expose their flaws.

If a seven-goal head start nearly wasn’t enough against the Dogs, it certainly won’t be against Melbourne. And it will once again be in September where the Cats’ season will be judged.