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To state the bleeding obvious, you don’t win nine games in a row without being a serious football side.
And Geelong, after 18 and a half rounds of footy in season 2022, appear to be a bit more serious than anyone else going around.
Beating Port Adelaide on their own turf is about as sure-fire a sign of a team’s premiership legitimacy as there is: it has proven too great for the Cats in each of the last two finals series. That they were able to repel a monster Power surge after half time, keep their composure in the face of unrelenting pressure and a cauldron-like Adelaide Oval, and eke out a victory is the stuff of great sides.
Not that it was without a great scare. And that’s why even now, clear premiership favourites and all but certainties for the minor premiership, backing the Cats for the flag still feels risky, riskier than if it were Melbourne or Richmond or even the Power themselves in the same position. Geelong are good – wonderful, in fact – but they do bleed, and they can be overpowered.
The Tigers proved that a month ago; the Power proved it with a scintillating (I resisted the urge to say electric) third quarter to hit the final break with an unexpected lead. Neither left those games with the four points, which says a lot about the Cats, but it’s enough to give opposition coaches a bit of an insight into how to unpick the ladder-leaders.
All season long, the Cats have been susceptible to conceding runs of goals when the tide of the match turns against them: in the spirit of what happened to them in the 2019 and 2020 finals series, let’s call it ‘being Richmonded’.
In both those games, the Tigers took just minutes after half time to make a seemingly impregnable position look decidedly pregnable; against Collingwood (six consecutive goals and eight of nine), Brisbane (four of five), Hawthorn (the final four majors), Fremantle (seven of eight), St Kilda (six in a row), the Western Bulldogs (seven of eight), West Coast (four in a row), Richmond again (10 of 11) and now the Power (eight of nine) a usually miserly defence has suddenly seen the ball fly over their heads time and time again.
Conceding huge floods of goals nine times in a year is an awful lot for a top-eight side, let alone a flag frontrunner. For all the credit the Cats deserve for regularly holding major leads at half time – 34 against the Power adds to as much as 35 against the Tigers, 40 against the Bulldogs and 22 against the Saints – it has to be a concern how easily they’ve let quality opposition back into their matches time and time again.
As it was against all the above sides bar perhaps Fremantle, Port’s resurgence started in the centre. After a 19-18 first half clearance count in favour of the hosts, the third term was an utter domination.
Rhys Stanley, at 31, is having the sort of year that explains why first St Kilda and then the Cats had a decade’s worth of patience in him making it; with 16 hitouts and eight clearances to half time, he completely outpointed the Power’s makeshift duo of Jeremy Finlayson and Charlie Dixon.
But a knee injury moments after half time turned the game so severely that Stanley couldn’t have boosted his reputation any further had he not been hurt; instantly, the Power began to run rampant out of the centre.
By the time Todd Marshall goalled to draw within a straight kick of the lead, they’d won centre clearances 6-1, and had kicked five goals from stoppages to just one.
The Cats’ midfield isn’t dominant – they’ve lost the clearance count this year more times than they’ve won it – but they still rely quite heavily on Joel Selwood doing the grunt work at the coalface.
With the skipper having his quietest day in some time, and Ollie Wines freed from a Mark Blicavs tag after he was needed in the ruck, Geelong’s defence were forced to contend with every backline’s worst nightmare: fast centre breaks with the 6-6-6 set-up.
As a result, a team that conceded six goals from 40 inside 50s across the other three quarters gave up eight from 19 in the third, as Port turned a 34-point half time deficit into a seven-point lead. Just as they had after going 17 points down to Richmond during the last quarter, the Cats felt gone.
As for the game-breaker, he wasn’t moved completely into the ruck – though he seemed to spend significantly more time around the ball than in the first half, when he was starved of supply deep in attack – but Charlie Dixon grabbed the game by the scruff of the throat and willed the Power along more than anyone else
With 11 disposals, five marks, two goals and eight contested possessions for the term, you’d struggle to see more influence from a key forward. It’s staggering how much more lethal the Power look with the big fella fit and firing, and the cost of his absence through injury in the early rounds now seems season-ruining.
Sam De Koning, by and large, had his measure under the high ball deep in defence – what a season he’s having – but a move further upfield brought him into the game, and resulted in one of those Dixon days where he seems for all money like the best key forward in the game. Suddenly, not even SDK could hold Charlie.
Port continued what Richmond, and St Kilda, and the Bulldogs, had already established: the Cats will give you a period of time, usually in the third quarter, of control out of the centre. When you get it, drive it in, separate your forwards, and see how the game’s most in-form team defence copes one out.
The Power took that advice to heart – their first 13 centre clearances resulted in an inside 50. You can’t afford to dawdle with ball in hand and allow the Cats to get numbers clogging up their defensive 50. Speed is the order of the day.
It also helps when you can blast through goals from outside 50.
Even Tom Stewart, who returns next week from his suspension, wouldn’t have been able to do much about the entries Port were generating. Stewart is peerless when it comes to dropping off his man, reading the high ball, and intercepting; but with the Power doing as much damage by handballing and short-chipping their way forward, winning 50-50 contests at the hard ball and breaking every stoppage apart.
As a result, the Power, by the final siren, had 59 points from the coalface – that’s your best bet of knocking over a Cats side that doesn’t give up much by way of turnover.
Tom Hawkins marks in front of Tom Clurey. (Photo by James Elsby/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The problem is that it’s not enough to produce one quarter of perfect footy against the Cats anymore. In 2019 and 2020, the Tigers hit the front in the third term and never looked back; this Geelong has ways of turning the worm.
It was more spectacular against Richmond – there, the Cats took the game on, split the Tigers apart with precision kicking and incredible dare, and wrested a game that looked lost back. This was more sensible, more clinical; intelligent ball use, ferocious intent at the ball-carrier, filling the dangerous space, all the things that had let the Power roar back in the third term.
For starters, the Cats locked up the midfield, with Tom Atkins the perfect man for the job. The most brutal tackler in the game was built for this sort of war of attrition; as the pressure lifted, so too did he.
With 12 possessions, the vast majority of them contested, he on his own was enough to cover for the shockingly quiet Selwood and Patrick Dangerfield. In the past, an 11-touch game from Danger would have been curtains for the Cats; 13 from Selwood in addition, and you’re looking at a frightful thumping. Not so New Geelong.
Who said old legs were supposed to tire late? The Cats are the kings of the final term this year – they’ve won it by 43 against the Magpies, kicked four of the last five on Freo, held the charging Dogs at bay, kicked four of the last five again on the Tigers, ran away from Melbourne, and the most impressive of the lot at Adelaide Oval. Just like against the Tigers and Freo, it was four of the last five.
Without dominating out of the centre like the Power had, the Cats found a way to yet again be ruthlessly efficient when going inside 50 – they had eight scores from 15 entries, with Tom Hawkins the eventual match-winner.
Chris Scott knows that in Hawkins, he has just about the strongest man in the game, and that any one-on-one chance he has will terrify opposition defenders.
Cue a wonderful kick from Bradley Close – whose first half was hands down the best I’ve seen from a small forward all year – perfectly to the advantage of the Tomahawk, with Tom Clurey powerless to stop it. Goal, Cats in front.
A high contact free against Ollie Wines – it was there – gave Hawkins the chance to ice the game a minute later; from 45 out, he made a deceptively difficult kick look easy. Game, set and match.
It’s been the tale of the tape for the Cats of late – control proceedings early, let the opposition back into the game quick smart, and then steady. Such is the ease with which they’ve made it look that, even on hostile territory against a Power outfit playing sensational football, from the first minute of that final term, when the Cats won it out of the centre, bounced it inside 50 and set up the space for Jeremy Cameron to work his magic, it felt like they once again had the match on their terms.
The Power are the latest team to learn that, for all their brilliance, the Cats will give you a chance. Maybe the key is for a team to time their run until the final quarter, and not give them a term to find their bearings.
The Cats are clearly the best side going around at the moment. They will win the minor premiership. And they are better equipped than they have been in years to win those big finals; this win over the Power was as close to a finals-like atmosphere as Round 19 can provide.
Geelong are beatable. But just because it can be done doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
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