Preliminary finals preview: Brace yourselves for blowouts

Can preliminary final weekend live up to the seemingly legendary 2022 finals campaign we’ve had so far?

The last fortnight’s worth of finals footy may well go down in history as the greatest set of fixtures ever.

As consumers, we tend to go from appreciative to demanding, so the expectation for this weekend may well be set up to an impossible standard.

Yet even if we weren’t blessed with such quality football, this weekend could turn out to be a little anticlimactic.

Full credit must go to Brisbane to reach this stage of September, certainly. They’ve been the biggest underdogs this finals series and in knocking off Richmond, then pulling off an incredible upset over Melbourne at the MCG, they’ve made anyone who wrote them off look silly.

Can they win the Premiership, though? No, not playing this way.

It’s all well and good to laugh at the Cats for their lack of finals success over the last decade but as we’ve repeatedly discussed in the Friday piece, this is a completely different Geelong team.

Gary Rohan of the Cats celebrates a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

We’ve never seen a Geelong team that is so incisive offensively as it is strong defensively, and that’s a huge concern for Brisbane.

To the Lions’ credit, they’ve never wavered from their direct, offensive style of play – their average of 24.03 disposals per goal is the best in the competition, while their combined ranking of 15th for average disposals and fifth for inside 50s per game indicates their style is consistent and all about the attack.

But for all the plaudits Chris Fagan’s men may receive for the high-octane style of play, they’ve benefitted significantly from accurate kicking, despite Hugh McCluggage averaging over a shot on goal per game.

In just four of their 24 games, they’ve scored more behinds than goals, an incredibly favourable ratio. In comparison, the Cats have had this be the case in 10 of their 23 games.

The Lions’ success is largely built by relying on volume. The quality is an added bonus, but they know they’re going to concede a substantial number of shots on goal, so they’re hoping to at least break even with their opponents and hope their accuracy gets them over the line.

What may surprise many, is that Geelong averages 13.9 disposals per shot on goal, which is ever so slightly better than Brisbane’s 13.94.

The misconception is that the Cats are a high-possession, slow team. That completely changed this season, where they actually became one of the most direct teams in the league, without forgoing anything defensively.

It helps to have two of the best key forwards in the league, but the work of Tyson Stengle, Brad Close and even Gryan Miers, as well as Gary Rohan in the Collingwood win, has been imperative to the offensive success.

Ultimately, this is a team that used to remain relatively structured and stagnant. Now, they have all their forwards pushing high up the ground and creating space in behind.

They have wingmen with huge fitness bases who can push out of the back half and outwork their opponents into their forward 50, while even the defenders have seen a massive uptick in score involvements by positioning themselves high up the ground.

Geelong strangles the opposition and forces them to try start their scoring chains from the back pocket. It never works out well.

It’s why this isn’t a good matchup for the Lions at all.

The Cats concede 45.4 inside 50s per game, the fewest in the league by far. Then, they concede scoring shots in just 39.87 per cent of attacking entries into the arc, ranked top four in the league.

On the other side of the ball, the Lions concede a score in 43.3 per cent of entries and concede the most marks inside 50 out of all teams that made finals, excluding the Bulldogs.

On paper, the Cats only won the Round 4 clash between the two by 10 points, having trailed after three quarters.

Yet drilling down further, we can see that the Lions were restricted to 42 inside 50s and 15 scoring shots, kicking 11 goals.

(Photo by Chris Hyde/AFL Photos/via Getty Images )

They conceded 60 inside 50s, had Geelong kicking inaccurately from their 25 shots on goal and concede a whopping 19 marks inside 50. Ultimately, that game played out exactly as we would expect.

It’s why we might be off to an anticlimactic start. A repeat of these numbers would see a thrashing on Friday night.

Certainly at a glance, Saturday’s twilight fixture offers more hope of a competitive game.

Collingwood has defied all odds to make it to a preliminary final, a truly extraordinary effort. No team has been as clutch in difficult situations and the results have generally flown in the face of what data may tell us.

It’s a tough, Richmond-like approach to the game. A whole-team commitment to defending as a group, hunting the opposition as a group and just blasting the ball forward, thriving on unpredictability.

No team can really handle unpredictable offensive play and it’ll certainly be what worries the Swans most.

Alongside Geelong, Sydney has been the most professional, rounded team in the competition.

They’ve defended strongly, controlled the ball well when necessary and in terms of disposals per scoring shot, they’ve actually exceeded both the Cats and the Lions, with 13.83.

While we praise how good the Magpies’ tackling has been, they averaged nearly two per game fewer than the Swans, who ranked second in the league.

Of course, Sydney was the team to snap Collingwood’s extraordinary winning streak this season with a comprehensive 27-point victory.

(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Since the Round 8 loss to Gold Coast, the Swans haven’t lost at the SCG. In fact, that game may have been a turning point in how the team figured out how to play well at home.

In the seven games at the venue since that point, the Swans averaged 103 points and conceded 60 points per games.

They scored over 100 points in five of those games – for reference, the previous 31 full-length games at the SCG saw Sydney break triple-figures at the venue.

The significant improvement offensively was matched with a tighter defence, where the Swans very much defended in a similar manner to Geelong, where they end up suffocating and squeezing the opposition into playing half-ground football.

Where Collingwood thrive in unpredictable forward 50 entries and their pressure creating easy intercept opportunities for their defenders, the Swans just don’t make those mistakes.

The Magpies average the most intercepts in the league (75.4) and cause their opponents to commit the most turnovers (75.1). Only when they win the ball back via intercept to they move the ball quickly offensively, often catching the defenders off-guard and using their well-positioned forwards to run into space.

Unfortunately for them, the Swans average the fourth-fewest turnovers (67.7) and allow the opposition to average the fourth-fewest intercepts (67.9).

While Sydney can carve up the opposition with slick ball movement, they don’t bite off more they can chew. Rarely do they commit too many players forward and even more rarely, do they kick the ball to an outnumber.

They have a mix of pace and preciseness off half-back and have turned players like Jake Lloyd into more willing defenders, to ensure the two-way influence is had.

Of course, it will be up to Collingwood to break down this nearly invincible Sydney team on their home deck.

The Swans have handled forward entries so much better since Robbie Fox came back and their coverage of all sizes has been great with the McCartin brothers and Dane Rampe joining him.

Perhaps the Magpies can place Scott Pendlebury and Nick Daicos across half-forward to force the Swans’ defenders to pay more attention to their opponents. We know Sydney will always have a sweeper in play, but having more quality users in the front half would create more space.

Sydney’s the best forward 50 tackling team and will apply pressure immediately, so if chaos is the only way Collingwood can win, the precise users may be better off playing up the ground.

In the end, we do have two games with four great teams who have had superb seasons filled with highlights.

It’s just important that we appreciate the footy we’re presented with and the quality of the eventual victors, rather than dwelling too much on the past fortnight and expecting more of the same.

We’re nearing the end of what has been an excellent season and it’s increasingly likely that the consensus two best teams will make the Grand Final.

Don’t be surprised if we have a couple of blowouts this weekend, before a Grand Final for the ages wraps up 2022.

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