AFL Grand Final Focus: Dad's Army wins the war - here's how Chris Scott's Cats produced their masterpiece

In 2007, Geelong headed into the grand final having won 18 of their last 19 games, handed Port Adelaide one of the game’s most infamous curb-stompings, and broke a 44-year premiership drought in the most emphatic way imaginable.

In 2009, the Cats faced St Kilda on the big day, who had lost two games for the season and both by under a kick, and after the most gruelling, brutal grand final in recent memory, atoned for their 2008 misstep with a thrilling triumph.

And in 2011, a first-year coach in Chris Scott led his charges to cement their legacy as one of the all time great teams to take down minor premiers Collingwood with a barnstorming last quarter to ruin what had to that point been a spectacular big dance.

All three are days anyone who bleeds blue and white will look back on fondly for the rest of their lives. But surely the Cats’ 2022 premiership triumph, an extraordinary 81-point triumph over a totally outhunted, outgunned and outplayed Sydney, is the greatest win of all for modern footy’s most exceptional club.

They’ve been written off as over the hill to start every year for a decade. Derided for their habit of recruiting players in the twilight of their careers. Scorned every year for fading come the finals, with Scott perhaps the most successful coach to ever have so many calling for his head.

It’s been a long time coming for Scott and the Cats who have come to symbolise his reign – think Patrick Dangerfield, Tom Stewart, Cameron Guthrie, Rhys Stanley. But there’s nothing like a premiership, not least one in the brutal, magnificent style of this grand final victory, to silence all the doubters for good.

Every decision that Scott and the Cats have made over the last decade, the ones that have taken the brunt of the blame for their repeated finals disappointments, bore fruit in the glorious sunshine at the MCG.

In a battle between the two best-run clubs of the last two decades, this was a premiership for Geelong the club as much as Geelong the team. It’s a triumph for everything they stand for both on-field and off; for every recruiting manager, development coach, executive officer, boot-studder.

The Cats’ flags from 2007-2011 were won by champion teams. This one was claimed by a champion football club. Perhaps the footy world will now realise, and grudgingly acknowledge, just how superb Geelong are in every aspect.

One of Aussie Rules football’s finest writers, The Age’s Martin Flanagan, once described grand finals as only holding their aura until one team or the other establishes their dominance. After that, they become events more than games, spectacles rather than contests.

Not since the unsociable Hawks in their threepeat pomp has a grand final so quickly lost its aura than this one. From the moment Tom Hawkins edged out Tom Hickey in a forward-50 ruck contest to snap through his and the Cats’ second goal, barely five minutes after he’d done exactly the same thing to exactly the same player for the game’s first, it was readily apparent how things would go.

The Swans, surely, knew this would happen – edging out the opposition ruckman and taking the ball clean out of the contest has been Hawkins’ modus operandi for years. It confounded teams by the score in 2020 before plans began to emerge to combat it. Here, the Swans had two players loose behind the ball, there to close up space and stop the Tomahawk in his tracks.

The problem was where they were placed. At the second boundary throw-in, the Cats fan out expertly around the stoppage, creating a circle of space for Hawkins to operate. Outside it, Errol Gulden and Nick Blakey sit free.

They don’t fill the space. Hawkins grabs it. Gryan Miers moves in to shepherd Blakey if need be, but the 34-year old’s hands are still quick enough to get boot to ball in a flash.

Goal.

The Cats were on – scratch that, they were ON. Set up beautifully at every stoppage, exploding from the coalface with intent, energy and fearsome strength, and brutalising any Swan who happened to lay hands on the footy with frenetic pressure, it was as electric a first quarter as you could hope for on the biggest stage of all.

The Swans weren’t even given the chance to be off: they didn’t even have a switch to start with. The first quarter was as one-sided a start to any game, never mind a grand final between the year’s two best teams, as you’ll see.

The Cats rank 12th this year for average contested possessions, and tenth for clearances. They’d lost the latter stat in both finals – yep, even Brisbane had more clearances in the prelim – and while the former had improved and was crucial in their qualifying final win over Collingwood, it’s hardly a strength.

Geelong’s usual ploy is to win the ball in their defensive half, usually via an intercept mark from a Tom Stewart or Sam De Koning, and then hit the accelerator. Streaming the ball forward with precise kicking, getting the ball in the hands of their quickest players in transition in Bradley Close and Gryan Miers, they turn defence into attack in the blink of an eye, giving their stacked forward line ample opportunities.

Stewart had just three disposals – and no marks – to quarter time. But it wasn’t the influence of a Ryan Clarke tag so much as it was just the ball not getting down there. For the Cats were utterly dominant in the clinches, to the point that their usual strength was simply not needed.

Winning 113 disposals to 67 for the quarter told of the thrashing as much as the scoreboard – though 6.5 (41) to 1.0 (6) is ugly in anyone’s language. It was as much as 84 to 53 at one point before the Swans finally managed to get some time in possession to close the quarter, as the Cats turned to lead-preservation mode.

As it stood, it was the fourth-biggest difference at quarter time of any game this season. Yep, not even West Coast or North Melbourne were bushwhacked like this all that often.

The contested possession tally was equally grim – 48 to 29. Yikes.

Isaac Smith of the Cats celebrates kicking a goal. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

Noticeable as well was Scott’s solution to replacing Max Holmes, a late withdrawal after the call was made to not risk his hamstring injury. I wrote last week that the loss of the 20-year old’s run and dash off the wing could open up a weakness for the pacy Swans to exploit.

The response was to shift Isaac Smith to that wing, while also giving Gryan Miers and Bradley Close freedom to roam. That pair, nominally forwards, were regularly seen deep into the defensive half, providing options to release, and then sprinting forward to get the Cats’ running game going.

Miers and Close perfectly summed up Geelong’s new approach in the first term; a brilliant inboard pass from Miers on the half-back flank found the long-sleeved number 45 perfectly amid a sea of Swans.

Past Cats teams would have been content to slow down play, chip the ball around, make incremental gains forward and focus on controlling the ball. Perhaps Miers would have moved into space on the wing and been hit up for an uncontested mark.

This time, Miers ran past to demand a handball receive, kept running, took on a Swan, and forced the Bloods onto the back foot. It wasn’t clean by any stretch, but it personified the Cats’ all-guns-blazing approach that has worked so spectacularly in 2022.

We’ll get to Smith’s role in a sec, but safe to say, it was pretty handy.

Even for the Cats, who have been the year’s best first-quarter team, the start was golden. With John Longmire reduced to throwing Callum Mills, his best contested ball winner, into defensive 50 to try and stem the bleeding – this is basically Sydney’s equivalent of a white flag – there was simply no stopping the Cats’ almighty wave.

Against a territory battle being overwhelmingly dominated by the Cats as well – between the Swans’ first and second goals they had just two inside 50s to 16 – even Robbie Fox’s stoic job on Jeremy Cameron was a fart arguing with thunder.

Whenever the Swans did find a way to go forward, standing in their way was Sam De Koning. No single footballer in Geelong’s best 22 better sums up how well this team is structured: a 21-year old key defender has no right to be as dominant as he has been for so much of this year.

It’s not just holding his own against the best key forwards in the game – though a clearly injured Sam Reid offered precious little resistance in the first half – it’s his intercept-marking ability, which nearly rivals Stewart. With five marks to quarter time, the Swans repeatedly found themselves unable to bypass him in the air.

In truth, that was as much to do with De Koning as it was the pressure on the ball-carrier: the Cats closed ranks with menace around the Swans whenever they dared to take possession, forcing high hopeful balls, hacked Hail Marys, and ball after ball sailing out on the full.

Sydney had just 13 marks to quarter time – for a side so famously precise by foot, that’s an extraordinary sign of the Cats’ single-minded determination to not give them an inch.

By the time the Swans got their game going in the second term, they were all but gone. As impressive as their running game looked whenever given the chance – they set up two goals from chains starting in defensive 50, exceptional against a team as miserly as Geelong – every time they threatened to push back into the match, the door slammed firmly in their face yet again, as the Cats rose to respond.

Sydney even led Geelong at half time – if only by a couple of points – for scores from intercepts, the stat the Cats have dominated all season long. Brisbane didn’t even manage a goal from this source until seconds before three-quarter time in the prelim.

So dominant were the premiers from stoppages that it just didn’t matter. Turnover footy usually wins games – but not when one team is controlling affairs from the source like the Cats.

But to say the Cats ran rampant in the contest all day doesn’t offer much – many teams in the past have made contested ball their focus and not had anything on the outside to back it up.

Geelong don’t mess around with their clearances – it’s why despite ranking mid-table for them, only Brisbane averaged more inside 50s per game. When they win it from the coalface, it’s all systems go.

You could look at the half-time stat line which read 18-18 in clearances and wonder how on earth the Swans were getting stomped so heartily. But an extraordinary 16 of the Cats’ clearances were effective – by which to say, enabled them to move the ball in the direction they chose.

In contrast, half of the Swans’ 18 finished with the ball in the Cats’ hands. So for 18-18, you might as well read 25-11.

Things got even more brutal after half time; the moment Mitch Duncan goalled to extend the margin to 42 points the game was done, and every single Swan knew it.

The turnover game bounced back quickly – five of the Cats’ six goals for the third term came from intercepts, compared to a solitary point for the Swans (their only point of the quarter).

Six goals to a solitary point for the quarter saw the floodgates open – but in truth, this game had been overwhelmingly one-sided from virtually the get-go.

Geelong spent 71 per cent of the third quarter in their forward half – an increase on the already phenomenal 63 per cent of the first two terms. The only question left to wonder was whether they’d slack off in the last, or whether they’d surpass their own 119-point grand final record that has plagued Port Adelaide fans for 15 years.

Oh, and the identity of the Norm Smith Medal, of course. To which there were, despite the Cats’ magnificence, five leading contenders.

I doubt he’ll get many votes, but Mark Blicavs was my man for most of the first three quarters. Praising his versatility might actually do him a disservice – yes, he can fill so many roles, but he’s at his best as a big-bodied, gut-running midfielder.

Good luck knocking him off the footy when he’s over it; he had eight first-quarter disposals, with more than half contested, as he got the Cats going time and time again. A perfect set shot from a difficult angle capped things off – no player had more influence on the match when it was properly up for grabs.

It’s just a bonus that he can basically fit wherever the Cats need him: it was clear early that a major focus was to limit the influence of Tom Hickey around the ground.

Between Blicavs, Rhys Stanley and Hawkins in forward 50, the Swans’ ruckman, arguably best afield in both their two finals, was absolutely dismantled. Barely sighted around the ground, his hit-out tally almost doubled by the Cats triple-act, and with neither Reid nor Hayden McLean doing anything to support him, I’m not sure Hickey has had a less impactful game as a Swan.

The sentimental favourite among Cats fans, of course, was Joel Selwood, whose 12 first-quarter disposals were the most by anyone on the ground – despite spending plenty of time on the bench.

He ceded control of the Geelong midfield to others for large parts, but he’s still the calm, composed, sensible fulcrum around which the engine room operates.

Normally a contested beast, he had just six in the grand final – but with eight marks, four in the first term, his greatest influence was as an outside mover, giving teammates options in space and from there deciding whether it was better for the Cats to move it on quickly or to exercise patience.

A goal in the last quarter would be a fitting exclamation mark on one of the finest, and most successful, careers the game has seen, should he call stumps. But he’s still well and truly good enough to keep going for a while longer.

Hawkins was, of course, a contender – though just like in the prelim, his kicking for goal probably cost him any chance.

With 3.4, he was again uncharacteristically wayward – but he was a menace every time the Cats looked for him. Seven shots at goal in a grand final, against a Swans defence that had no answer to him, confirms his standing as one of the great forwards we’ve ever seen.

Then, of course, there was Patrick Dangerfield. With three first-quarter clearances, it was Paddy again who got the Cats rolling, just as he’d done against Brisbane.

Having missed out on the premiership he’s been obsessed with winning all his life in 2020, he seemed ready to drag the Cats over the line – while his teammates were perfectly capable getting their themselves, he was still in absolutely everything.

19 contested possessions and nine disposals is a staggering effort – I’d argue he wasn’t as supremely explosive as he was in the prelim, yet he still finished with 469 metres gained, second-most of the Cats. 12 score involvements – six of them direct goals – would have earned him a second medal on most other days.

If the game was won at the contest, then Dangerfield was the biggest beast of all. He summed up their dominance, as he has basically since he walked through the Kardinia Park doors at the end of 2015.

But for so many reasons, Isaac Smith was the fitting choice as best afield. I said we’d get back to him, didn’t I?

For much of the finals series, Smith has made a home inside 50, pushing upfield as required but certainly far from the perpetually running winger he’s been throughout his time at the highest level.

But Holmes’ injury presented an opportunity to reacquaint himself with the Shane Warne stand side – and the 33-year old took it with both hands.

The two goals he kicked in the first quarter to turn the Cats’ bright start into an overwhelming surge, were quintessential Smith: charging inside 50 on the end of a slick Cats’ run, his lethal left boot never looked like deviating for a second.

He ended with 771 metres gained – woah. On top of that, three goals. 84 per cent of his 32 disposals found their mark – and with 23 of them kicks, it wasn’t like they were all five-metre handballs, either.

Most impressively of all, perhaps, were his five clearances. Particularly around boundary throw-ins, he seldom bothered with the usual wing role of creating space and outside run – he’d just win the damn thing himself, speed through a cluster of Swans, and drive it forward again.

His nine inside 50s led all comers – Dangerfield, of course, came second. With 12 score involvements, he matched Paddy’s tally as well. And, the clincher – three goals, matching his 2015 haul when a Hawk.

It was a vindication for experience, a slap in the face to anyone who’s ever axed a 30-year old because they’re not in the next premiership team, or derided a veteran for being over the hill.

It sums up Geelong to a tee – a club that recognises talent, poise, experience and class don’t just fade away with more miles on the clock.

The Cats were the oldest side in AFL history on Saturday. No team has ever had more games under their belt.

That’s been used as a stick to beat them with in the past, a running joke.

But Dad’s Army just won the war.