In the end, the Cats had a good victory over the West Coast Eagles, but along the way they were made to fight for it by an improved Eagles team that had managed to get back to level the scores at halftime.
For the Cats’ forwards, the game provided plenty of opportunities to achieve milestones and seriously disturb the order and composition of Geelong’s (and the AFL’s) top 100 goal scorers lists.
Fourteen minutes into the third quarter, Tom Hawkins kicked his second goal of the match to bring up 700 AFL goals and draw level with Matthew Pavlich, the leading goal kicker at Fremantle, and 25th on the AFL’s top 100 list.
Jokingly dubbed as “Nobody” because nobody’s perfect, Pavlich proved to be an ideal player to coach, able to hold his own in any position on the ground and an inspiration to his teammates in all of his 353 games – a club record broken by David Mundy at the end of the 2021 season.
After starting his career in 2000, Pavlich was the first Docker to win All Australian selection in 2002. In all, he was an All Australian player for seven years, best and fairest six times and leading club goal kicker on eight occasions.
Just as time on started in the fourth quarter, Hawkins kicked his third goal and would have been closing in on Josh Kennedy, who started the day on 702 goals, except that Kennedy managed to snare two goals of his own and remain three goals ahead of Hawkins.
In the middle of Geelong’s top 100 goal kickers, Joel Selwood and Mitch Duncan continued their battle as they match each other goal-for-goal. Neither have been big goal scorers this season as both had kicked three goals prior to this round, which meant that Selwood retained his one goal advantage over Duncan.
However, Duncan managed a goal against the Eagles, so both players are now locked together on 171 goals.
At the bottom of the list – as I reported last week – Jeremy Cameron’s bag of goals was enough for him to join Shayne Breuer and David Barkley in the hot seat at No.100 (equal). Cameron only scored one goal this week but that was enough to raise the ‘bar’ and dislodge Breuer and Barkley from the top 100 list.
(Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
Shayne Breuer’s main claim to fame was not his three years at Geelong – despite his goal kicking ability and his appearance in two grand finals – but the fact that he kicked Port Adelaide’s first goal in the AFL.
David Barkley was recruited from University Blues in 1972 and played 55 games for the Cats.
No sooner had Cameron dislodged Breuer and Barkley from the list, he was joined by Sam Menegola, who kicked two goals in his first game for the 2022 season.
The earlier game of the day had seen Port Adelaide add some spice to the final-eight mixture by defeating Sydney by 23 points. For the second week in a row, Brian McGowan was overtaken on the top 100 goal kickers list of Sydney – this time it was Isaac Heeney, who kicked four goals.
Lance “Buddy” Franklin kicked only one so his chances of catching Gary Ablett on the AFL list or Barry Hall, Tony Lockett and Adam Goodes on the Sydney list are fading.
For Port Adelaide, Todd Marshall bagged four goals, which was enough for him to move past Sam Gray and Angus Monfries on the Power’s top 100 goal kickers list. In his second game back, Charlie Dixon kicked two goals.
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