Footy Fix: Premiers back on track, or is one of the greatest quarters in AFL history just a dead Cat bounce?

There were two moments on Easter Monday that couldn’t have summed up a quite extraordinary afternoon at the MCG any better.

In the first quarter, with Geelong being put to the sword by a younger, fiercer and hungrier Hawthorn, Patrick Dangerfield was on the end of a neat kick out of defence by Tom Stewart. He ran towards the ball, jumped… and clean missed it.

The gasps in the stadium were palpable. Dangerfield doesn’t do gaffes like that. At least… he didn’t.

Fast forward to the third term, with the Cats, nine points down at half time, in the midst of a match-turning onslaught. Jai Newcombe streamed forward for the Hawks, seemingly destined to hand them their first inside 50 for the term.

Rushing up behind him, though, was Dangerfield. Closing the metres between he and Newcombe like a lion after a gazelle, he swallowed the Hawk whole with a bone-crushing tackle. Holding the ball.

Dangerfield’s start to the season has come to embody the side he now captains: a side apparently well on the wrong side of its peak, trying mightily but failing to impact games in the manner we’re accustomed to.

It hasn’t always been fair: with the Cats dismantled out of the centre by the Hawks in the first half on Monday, Dangerfield was essentially fighting a one-man battle – two if you count Jeremy Cameron single-handedly keeping the scoreboard ticking over in the forward line.

By half time, the skipper had five of their ten clearances. Hawthorn had 24 as a team.

But they weren’t the clearances we’re used to seeing from Dangerfield. He’s not as quick, nor as explosive as in his heyday, nor as polished as he was throughout his remarkable finals series last year. He can’t break away from would-be tackles as cleanly as he used to, nor use his exceptional pace out of the blocks to get himself in the clear. It means he’s often forced to hack kick long with two or three players hanging off him; the Hawks interceptors, Sam Frost in particular, were only too keen to cash in.

Meanwhile, his direct opponent, Will Day, was having, well, a field day. With the Hawks rifling away the first three centre clearances of the day and heading to quarter time with a 4-1 advantage in that most important of stats, it was Day leading the charge with four clearances for the term – two of them straight out of centre bounces.

The Hawks keep things simple under Sam Mitchell, particularly on the attack. When you win the ball in close, get it to the outside as quickly as you can, then move the ball fast and with purpose. It was too much for North Melbourne to handle last week; in the first half, it was too much for Geelong as well.

Speed on the ball is a priority: that’s why Day and Josh Ward are now the drivers of the Hawks’ engine room, and the older and slower Jaeger O’Meara and Tom Mitchell left surplus to requirements and shipped out. You can’t say it hasn’t worked: in the first three rounds, the Hawks were the number one centre clearance team in the AFL, up from 18th in 2022.

Then, once the ball is inside 50, their army of pressure smalls lock it in and refuse to let it out without a fight. The Cats, try as they might to keep a steady tempo with a series of chip passes that brought to mind the stodgy, finals-losing Geelong of old, were often forced into turnovers, or just plain caught with the ball. By half time, the Hawks had 10 tackles inside 50, while the Cats had just three.

The Hawks press quite highly in defence, and are super aggressive in cutting off the wayward kicks outside their 50 that their manic pressure tries to force. Changkuoth Jiath and James Sicily are masters of this, while the Hawks’ two-ruck set-up usually allows one of Ned Reeves or Lloyd Meek to also be behind the ball for some extra height.

It gives good teams a chance to get out the back and score, which the Cats did plenty of in the second half, but considering the defensive stocks Mitchell have at his disposal, it’s probably the best plan they could have. But no good team is letting Tom Hawkins be one out in defensive 50, let alone Jeremy Cameron with all the space in the world ahead of him, like the Hawks do here.

If the Hawks can win the territory battle, as they did commandingly with a 31-20 inside 50 differential to half time, they can trouble anyone. Really, a nine-point half time margin flattered the Cats, with Cameron – three goals and a perfect goal assist for Max Holmes – the only reason they’d even troubled the scorers.

With 20 disposals, the returning Mitch Duncan was in everything – but the fact he’d had so much of the ball roaming at half-back tells you exactly how the Hawks were playing.

They’re totally fine leaving an extra number or two free behind the ball, pushing up as many numbers as they can to stoppages; then, when they win the ball, they back themselves to have the speed to break away with handball from the coalface and spread quickly, running at those spare opposition players rather than kicking down their throats. Notably, though, their deepest forward, usually Fergus Greene, made sure to stick as close to Tom Stewart as he could, knowing that if a high ball did come, Stewart was the most likely Cat to intercept.

Of course, all that only works if your midfield is controlling the ball from the source. And that turned on its head after half time.

Jai Newcombe of the Hawks is tackled by Patrick Dangerfield of the Cats. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Chris Scott made his changes – Cameron Guthrie, with seven tackles but zero clearances to half time returning to an on-ball role after time at half-back in the last fortnight, began the second half on the bench. Tom Atkins, horribly out of form but a battering ram for the Cats last year, was injected straight on.

But it’s honestly hard to pinpoint exactly what changed: Rhys Stanley didn’t start dominating the Meek-Reeves duo in the ruck, the Hawks didn’t suffer an injury, there was no single Cat who ripped the game to shreds.

The best explanation I can come up with is this: the Hawks are, like everywhere else on the ground, very attacking in their centre bounce formations. They know, especially against a side as sound behind the ball as Geelong (though not to start this year!), their best bet is to get away quickly and efficiently, and not need repeat stoppages in the middle.

It’s a high reward strategy, and saw the Hawks get two goals from their first two centre clearances of the game – interestingly, they did the exact same thing to the Cats in last year’s Easter Monday clash.

But when it fails, as it did in the second half, a blitz can ensue. Trust me – I’ve watched the Western Bulldogs run this gauntlet for two years. I know a momentum shift when I see one.

The result was a bloodbath. Suddenly, it was the Cats winning those first possessions out of the centre – touches that come down to the luck of being in the right spot at the right time more than most of us would care to admit – and the Hawks had no midfield system in place that could stop them.

Guthrie, deployed back on-ball once the momentum had shifted, had five second-half clearances. Dangerfield had five as well. Atkins, while only ending with 14 disposals, had two crucial ones in the game-changing third term.

From 10-24 down in the clearance count at half time, and 2-6 down out of the centre, the Cats headed to three quarter time having won them 14-4 and 5-2 – and a staggering 22 inside 50s to one for the term.

The Cats just had too many weapons in attack for an undersized Hawks defence to cope with such a bombardment. Suddenly, it was them hack-kicking out of their back 50 with no other options and mounting pressure; and the Cats were only too happy to capitalise.

There was Cameron, of course, but other options presented themselves. Ollie Henry, subbed on at half time, was immense with two goals after half time – had he not missed thrice, he could have had a serious day.

With Gary Rohan set to be sidelined for his crude sling tackle on Jiath, the mid-sized forward role should be his for the next few weeks at least – and with Tom Hawkins beginning to move with his usual freedom, he’s a more than handy third foil.

At ground level, Tyson Stengle, barely sighted, got in on the fun, as did Bradley Close and Gryan Miers – though it has to be said, they were very much riding the slipstream, with Stengle and Close in particular notably down when the going wasn’t quite as good in the first half.

From nine points down at half time, the Cats were 56 up at the final term, having scored 10.5 to no score – and one of those behinds was controversially awarded despite Henry being adamant it was a goal, and no ARC Snickometer to figure out if the ball had clipped the post.

It’s Hawthorn’s worst quarter in their illustrious 99-year history; it’s the best by any team since the Cats themselves massacred Port Adelaide back in 2010. You’ll struggle to find a more dominant quarter in the game’s history, especially when you remember that it was inflicted on a team with a half time lead.

With five goals to one in the last term, and another 11-7 clearance advantage, the onslaught continued on as the Cats ran up their numbers; Cameron bagging a seventh and flattening the goal umpire about as entertaining as things got.

All that was left to decide was whether the Cats were officially B-A-C-K back, or if they’d just crushed the wooden spoon favourites like a top side keen to make a statement.

It’s a fascinating dilemma; is it more encouraging for the Cats to be this dominant in just two quarters, or would they be better placed had they dominated the Hawks from start to finish?

I’m in the former camp: the Hawks showed enough in the first half to leave the reigning champs on the ropes, so to turn their biggest first-half disadvantage – the clearance count – into an overwhelming strength is proof enough that these Cats still have it in them to be a very serious force in 2023.

Then again, there’s a difference in being able to turn on the switch at will and having it happen in fits and starts, often when you least expect it – no matter how spectacular the floodlights are when they do come on.

On Saturday, I watched Richmond kick seven goals in 15 minutes against the Bulldogs, bringing to mind their glory years, and do stuff all for the rest of the game.

No doubt the Cats will curb-stomp other teams this year, and win games in bursts of pure, unmatched brilliance. They’ll probably do something similar to a woefully undermanned West Coast next week, and leave with us all equally uncertain about whether they’re back in business.

If Geelong can do what they did in the third quarter against Hawthorn every week, then few if any teams in the competition will be able to stop them.

That, however, is a substantial ‘if’ – and one that will take us a while to work out one way or the other. It took until the last six weeks of 2021 to realise that the mighty Tigers were gone; one glorious day against a youthful opponent that ran out of steam shouldn’t be enough to quell any doubts you might have about the Geelong juggernaut.