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Footy Fix: The Blues took 21 Cats to the cleaners. The 22nd nearly won it for them anyway

23rd March, 2023
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23rd March, 2023
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At times on Friday night at the MCG, it felt like Jeremy Cameron versus the world.

It became clear midway through 2022 that Cameron was quite comfortably Geelong’s best and most impactful player, but it’s becoming painfully, even embarrassingly, clear to start 2023. With the Cats 0-2, their latest defeat by eight points at the hands of a younger, stronger and hungrier Carlton, their spearhead has been the only one to even come close to his premiership-winning best.

Cameron needed to be everything everywhere all at once (good title for a movie, that) for the Cats to even keep their heads above water on Friday night. Up forward, he was masterful, finding pockets of space all night and kicking magificently throughout.

He roamed up to the wings to give his under-siege defenders someone to kick aimlessly at and hope for the best; he even spent time in defence, plucking intercept marks and standing in the hole to support a back six decimated during the week by injury and decimated some more by the Blues on the field.

By three-quarter time, Cameron led or was close to leading the Cats in just about every stat: a team-high 15 kicks, five marks, 450 metres gained and three goals, second in disposals with 18, one behind Isaac Smith. You couldn’t ask for any more from him.

And then for good measure, he started the last quarter with two goals in rapid time, and three for the term: the first a strong lead from deep inside 50 and nerveless finish from the arc, the second a smart reading of a short kick-in to intercept mark and again kick truly; the third a masterful snap from deep in the pocket to reignite hopes in the dying stages. All that despite wearing the effects of a brutal collision with Blake Acres that left him noticeably winded.

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The good news for the Cats is that, despite the fact that you could make a pretty compelling case Cameron was the only one out of 23 Cats who won their position, they only lost to another very good team by eight points.

Obliterated in midfield, cut to shreds on the counterattack and far more impotent in attack, Jezza excepted, than they were against Collingwood in last week’s loss, it’s enough for the first murmurings of alarm if you’re a Geelong fan – but again, it took absolutely everything out of a fellow contender to hold off their late charge when pressure turned to fatigue and the midfield battle tipped Geelong’s way at last.

Cameron will win the Cats games off his own boot this year if he keeps playing like this, particularly against weaker or mid-range sides. But you’re not going to win a premiership off the back of one guy, no matter how outrageously gifted.

Blake Acres of the Blues marks the ball against Jeremy Cameron of the Cats.

Blake Acres of the Blues marks the ball against Jeremy Cameron of the Cats. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

The Cats have made enough doubters look foolish over the years by writing them off prematurely, and it’s important to remember two things: one, they started their pre-season later than anyone else, and with a summer of celebration behind them; and two, they started last year 5-4 and in a similar state of mild disrepair, and look where that ended.

It should also be noted that as thoroughly ordinary at the Cats look, they were made to look ordinary by a Blues outfit that came with a plan to hunt the premiers and executed it brilliantly. Geelong have twice in a row run into serious sides with all the tools to punish them if they’re slightly off the game, and twice in a row they’ve been dismantled.

Make no mistake: this is a statement win for the Blues. Like the Cats, it’s too early to make predictions on how the rest of their season pans out, but the same is true for them as it was last year. They’re a club with all the tools to be a very serious finals outfit – they’ve just got to not bottle it spectacularly before they make it there.

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For starters, they turned the pressure dial up on the Cats, suffocating a side missing two of its prime defensive ball movers in Mitch Duncan and Tom Stewart. By quarter time, the pressure gauge was up at 195, with the Cats, who themselves were bringing the heat, down at 181.

It meant a scrappy start for both teams, as the ball pinged up one side to the other only to falter with the last kick inside 50. The first two goals of the game came from pressure acts as well: defensive half smothers creating a quick turnover and overlap run. The Blues got theirs as Charlie Curnow snuck out the back of the Cats’ defensive press to mark in the goalsquare, the Cats’ as Gary Rohan gathered in the middle, realised no one was ahead of him and split the middle from 60 out.

In the midst of it all, the most fascinating contest was Jacob Weitering versus Tom Hawkins.

The Cat has a size and strength advantage on just about everyone he plays on. Weitering knew this: instead of looking to engage in one-on-one contests, he played enough rope, always keeping Hawkins close enough that he could close space and spoil but never too close as to allow an underdone-looking Tomahawk to prevent a run and jump at the ball to intercept with body work.

Positionally, he was nearly always on the inside shoulder of Hawkins, forcing him to lead wide for marks that required the kicks at him to be perfect. With the Blues’ pressure frenetic up the field, Weitering’s expert reading of the play led to intercept marks aplenty;

Hawkins, as it happened, finished statless for the quarter, aside from two frees against (one, for a rake to Weitering’s face that forced him off under the blood rule, really should be looked at by MRO Michael Christian).

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Sure enough, the first time the big Cat got a one-on-one opportunity to use his strength on Weitering, midway through the second term, he’d duly take a mark.

Weitering’s brilliance helped make an even first term on the inside 50 count, 13 apiece, feel far more one-sided. The reality was the Cats had just as much territory, but in virtually every other metric the Blues were by far the more dangerous side. There’s a difference between a perfectly weighted pass inside 50 to a leading forward and a wild hack under pressure that lands in the arms of an opposing backman, after all.

Along the way, bad habits began to creep into the Cats’ style: by halfway through the second term, they had played on from just four per cent of their marks. Fixing their previously stodgy ball movement and becoming more freewheeling was a cornerstone of their premiership triumph last year, and even in their loss to the Magpies had played on from 37.7 per cent of their marks, a team high.

The Blues’ pressure, and more importantly, their excellent set-up behind the ball, was forcing the Cats away from the style that won them the flag. And it meant a lift in turnovers – the Blues scored six goals to one from forward half intercepts on Friday night, and finished with a 15-7 advantage in forward half ground-ball gets once that ball was in dispute. That was the game.

With 129 disposals to 81, 43 to 30 contested possesions and forcing Geelong into an un-Cats-like 27 turnovers, only an inaccurate 2.6 kept the Cats within a kick of the lead at quarter time. The Blues looked set to pay the price when the Cats dominated the start of the second term, kicking the first two goals, winning 18 of the first 20 disposals and claiming the first four inside 50s. It would prove one of only two periods for the game where the Cats looked like, well, Geelong.

Enter Charlie Curnow. Quiet last week against Richmond, the Tigers put a lot of work into preventing the reigning Coleman Medallist get any sort of free space to lead into. Explosive off the mark and superb in the air in full flight, he’s the anti-Hawkins: the best place to get him as a defender is right under the ball drop, where he can be buffeted off the ball by a quality defender more than you could for his running mate Harry McKay.

Curnow, though, can’t be kept quiet forever, and he was primed to explode if the Cats ever dropped their game in defence. Cue the second term: Sam De Koning, inexplicably, was drawn up to a contest, the Blues won it at the source, Ed Curnow found his brother loitering on the 50m arc, and Charlie did the rest.

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From then on, he was unleashed. Leading strongly at the ball, proving too clever in the air for Esava Ratugolea and too powerful for Mark O’Connor, it was, dare I say it, becoming the sort of game Hawthorn-era Lance Franklin played when his left boot was on target. With four marks inside 50, Curnow was doing everything he could to out-Jeremy Cameron.

But it’s one thing to have a world-eater as a forward, and quite another to get it to them quickly enough to matter. Fortunately, that’s just what the Blues had in mind.

Criticised for being reckless at times with their ball use against the Tigers, the Blues were just as aggressive against the Cats… it’s just that this time, they didn’t butcher it quite as much.

By half time, the inside 50 count was still even at 27-27, while the clearances were tied at 16-16; where the Blues were getting the Cats was on the rebound. Similar to last week against Collingwood, Geelong proved vulnerable against rapid ball movement into their undermanned defence, and the Blues had the forward options to pounce.

Leading the charge up the ground was Adam Sad, with 19 disposals, nine intercepts and five score involvements: more to the point, his speed, dare and raking long ball (I’m impressed Blues fans are still ‘woof’ing every single one of his kicks) are perfectly suited for the quick ball movement the Blues were trying to employ.

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Just as good was Blake Acres, deployed in a slightly different role to his classic wingman job at Fremantle last year. In 2022, he lived up to his name by permanently holding his space: he was always the number one option the Dockers’ defenders looked to for a quick outlet kick from the backline, while more often than not it was he too who delivered that last kick inside 50. Always from the flanks, mind.

Against the Cats, he’d hold his space when the Blues didn’t have the ball, denying the Cats lateral movement: with the ball, though, his first instinct was always to head into the corridor, outnumber Geelong wherever the ball was, and surge forward.

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Acres had 10 disposals for the quarter, three inside 50s and four score involvements. With Ollie Hollands taking the defensive wing spot – and boy, didn’t he step up in the last quarter with some clutch efforts deep in defensive 50 with the game on the line – it means the former Docker can look to be aggressive with his positioning and his running. He was one dropped mark away in the dying seconds against the Tigers from that paying dividends, but it certainly did tonight.

In midfield, despite the clearance evenness, the Cats’ on-ball brigade were being soundly beaten away from the contest. By half time, Cameron Guthrie, the reigning best ad fairest winner, had just six disposals, soundly beaten in a tight tag from Ed Curnow; Patrick Dangerfield, he who might have won the Norm Smith, had had 11 but just three kicks, and virtually no impact on the game.

It was here where the Cats sorely missed Joel Selwood: unto the last he was a battering ram, the splitter of contests and winner of the hard ball, opener of space for Dangerfield to explode through in close. Without him, the unit looks disjointed, even though all the other old names are there.

Tom Atkins is a fine example: moved into the midfield midway through 2022, his ferocious tackling became a key part of the Cats’ machine, forcing turnovers and stoppages whenever the opposition looked like getting going. While he still had 11 tackles for the night, just 13 disposals told of his lack of impact with ball in hand. Last year, with Selwood around, that didn’t matter as much: this year, they all need to step up just that bit more.

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Then cometh the third quarter, and the slow looming threat of the Blues became an avalanche, every bit the equivalent of Collingwood’s last term in Round 1. 16 inside 50s to 9 told the tale of a backline under siege, and a midfield that might still be neck and neck for clearances, but was getting infinitely more from them.

Kept reasonably quiet by Mark Blicavs in the first half, Chris Scott’s release of the Patrick Cripps tag didn’t have the desired effect; with 11 disposals and half of his six clearances for the match, the skipper lifted to spark the charge. Ditto Ed Curnow, who not only had Cam Guthrie firmly nestled in his back pocket, but finished with six clearances of his own in the finish.

The goals, Curnow aside, came from the smalls: Matthew Owies and Corey Durdin banged through crafty snaps as a nice boost to their usual roles of pressure-providers in chief, while Zac Fisher snuck out the back to ruthlessly expose a Cats defence that on too many occasions were caught woefully out of position.

Curnow’s fifth goal was the perfect example: a loose, bobbling ball inside 50 was gathered by Zach Tuohy, who found himself set upon by Harry McKay. There was no Stewart riding shotgun for the handball receive, no Duncan waiting in the back pocket for a get out of jail kick. Just Tuohy, with a monster closing in: little wonder his desperate handball away was smothered mid-tackle, the ball jarred free, Owies swooped on it and his snap towards goal was marked by Charlie on the line.

Cameron’s brilliance was single-handedly keeping the Cats in the game: when his team started to go with him in the last quarter, a comeback looked legitimately on.

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The ineffectual Guthrie was moved to half-back, where he’d finished with 12 last-quarter disposals of 25 for the game and set up repeat Cat attacks. Pushed onto the ball, Max Holmes proved an ace up the sleeve at the coalface for Scott, with his spreading speed away from the contest allowing the Cats to do what the Blues had done to them early, and run their way through congestion and into dangerous space.

On the end of it all was Cameron. The problem was, in the end, there just weren’t enough other forward options, and passes to the hot man became predictable.

Case in point: the deciding moment of the game. Bradley Close marks on the edge of 50, wheels, turns, and kicks exactly where he was always going to kick: out in front of a leading Cameron, Lewis Young trailing well behind.

But Hollands, two games into his career, knew where the ball was going. Watch the replay and you can see, as he runs inside 50, his head turn to watch the ball, and then turn back to find Cameron. He sees the ball go wider than the corridor he was originally running to, and needs to quickly change direction.

Cameron would have been hit on the chest, but at the perfect moment, Hollands arrives: he stands in the hole, gets his fist to the ball, and the cavalry arrives.

The Blues escape. The Blues win.

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