Tiger time! Dustin Martin celebrates his fourth goal as the Tigers clinch their third flag in four seasons. Photo: AFL MEDIA
Four years of dominance, three premierships. It’s been an amazing turnaround by the Richmond Football Club, one so complete it’s coming awfully close to eclipsing even those golden days of the 1960s and ‘70s for so long the club’s only comfort.
Nobody, not even the most fervent Tiger fan, could ever have dreamed of this when their side dragged itself from the SCG after the last game of 2016, having just been beaten by 113 points and finishing 13th.
The flag drought by then was 36 years, the Tigers as seemingly far from success as ever in that barren four-odd decades. But here we are, Richmond now level with Hawthorn on 13 premierships, not all that long after you couldn’t even dream of an 11th.
And if anything was required to frank this team as truly “great”, this 31-point win over a game but tired Geelong, was it. Not just because of what had been endured in the hubs, but by what it overcame on the night.
Richmond had sprinted to its past two flags, Adelaide then GWS all but put to the sword by the half-time. But this one was very different.
The Tigers started well. But Geelong, desperate to write its own story, was giving one hell of a yelp. After conceding the first two goals, it slammed on the next five.
It had Mitch Duncan picking up touches all over the place, Tom Stewart bobbing up to repel any Tiger attack, its small forwards fierce with pressure. It led by 22 points barely a minute out from half-time. But ultimately, even it couldn’t hold down long enough a truly great football team.
It was properly only fitting that such an unorthodox grand final arrangement would feature a start to the game just as unusual.
Little of consequence had happened, the game only a couple of minutes old, when two separate incidents unrelated but in the same passage of play, seemed to spell tremendous consequences for both teams.
In the first, Geelong’s Dangerfield strong-armed his way through some contact and into the scone of important Tiger defender Nick Vlastuin, out cold before he’d even hit the deck. Less than a second later, Cats’ champion Ablett, in his final game, hit the turf hard and emerged in agony, holding his left shoulder gingerly.
That was a lot to take in, even in the seven-and-a-half minutes it took to get the stretcher out and carry Vlastuin off. Ablett was simultaneously helped from the field, it seemed, not to return.
It was Geelong with the first opportunities, chances missed, points to Tom Hawkins and Dangerfield. And not for the first time these past four years, they were let-offs upon which Richmond would capitalise.
With only seven minutes of play left and the scoreboard still not ticking over, Dion Prestia pounced. Just on two minutes later, a lovely Martin centre to Liam Baker fed Kamdyn McIntosh, whose shot on the run from 50 metres never looked like missing.
We’ve seen this trick before. Geelong needed an answer pronto. And they got one. And more. It was Cam Guthrie who restored some equilibrium with a set shot from the 50. Then a critical moment, Mitch Duncan finding the middle with a very tricky shot from the boundary line.
The Cats went in a point up and with their tails up. That much became obvious pretty soon after the siren sounded to start the second term.
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While Vlastuin hadn’t been able to return for Richmond, already dressed in his street clothes by the first break, Ablett had for the Cats. That was the symbolic edge. They enjoyed a statistical edge, too. And now they were about to start cashing in on the scoreboard.
Dangerfield nailed what was perhaps a fortunate free kick conceded by Tiger skipper Trent Cotchin. Gryan Miers and Zac Tuohy missed a couple of chances to increase the advantage. But Sam Menegola didn’t.
He made the most of another opportunity created by Geelong’s fierce pressure, Noah Balta turning the ball over to Joel Selwood, then through Gryan Miers finding the goalkicking midfielder in a good spot.
That made the difference 16 points. Which became 22 quickly enough thanks to Tom Hawkins’ first of the evening, Selwood’s pass finding his lead, but that pass only possible because of a deft little tap from the revived Ablett out of the centre square.
The best part of four goals in these greasy conditions looked a long way back for Richmond. Martin, though, was up for it.
His most important touch of the first half came with only 75 seconds left on the clock, under fierce pressure somehow still managing to steer the ball on to his right boot and snap his first goal. The Tigers were still in touch.
And while the scoreboard didn’t reflect, they’d also more than restored the ledger in terms of the flow of the game. Richmond jogged off the ground having enjoyed the last eight inside 50 entries of the second quarter.
Tiger tails were up. And that became a lot more obvious within five minutes of the restart, by which time that gap had been reduced to just three points after goals to Jack Riewoldt and Jason Catsagna.
Miers kept the Cats ticking with a bouncing effort after a lovely exchange of handballs from Hawkins, Ablett and Luke Dahlhaus. But it wasn’t going to faze the Tigers.
Their relentless pressure was starting to play on Geelong minds as it has with so many opponents over the past few years, a tentative clearing kick from Jed Bews intercepted by Shai Bolton, then Geelong failing to man up an unattended Kane Lambert.
He made no mistake from 30 metres. And then that man Martin, every touch worth its weight in gold, did it again, with a bouncing checkside snap restoring Richmond’s lead for the first time since the first term.
The margin was only two points at the last break, but you sensed the Tigers were ready to pounce. And they did just that with a minute of the start of the last quarter, Lambert’s handball to Prestia seeing the nuggety little Tiger dribble through his second goal.
By now, the Tigers had kicked six of the last seven. And soon enough it would be eight out of nine and premiership No.13 in the bag.
Tom Lynch might have had a difficult evening, but helped hammer a nail in the Cat coffin with a goalsquare mark and conversion.
And “Dusty”? Well, what can you say? If there was any doubt he was going to become the first man to win a third Norm Smith Medal, it was erased with his dominant final term.
It was, appropriately, he who basically sealed the deal with a long-range speculator which bounced through to make the difference 22 points, a 44-point turnaround from late in the second term. And it was Martin who put the icing on the cake with the final goal of the game.
Even then though, not all the talk was about this modern day, and now surely, all-time great. He’s a huge part, of course. But this magnificent side, which now has rewards even it could hardly have dreamed of four years ago, is the very definition of team.
They have set a standard few can match. And who is to say they can’t continue to set it for several years yet.
RICHMOND 2.1 3.2 7.4 12.9 (81)
GEELONG 2.2 5.5 6.8 7.8 (50)
GOALS
Richmond: Martin 4, Prestia 2, Riewoldt 2, Castagna, Lambert, Lynch, McIntosh
Geelong: Menegola 2, Dangerfield, Duncan, Guthrie, Hawkins, Miers
BEST
Richmond: Martin, Short, Edwards, Prestia, Cotchin, Bolton
Geelong: Duncan, Stewart, Selwood, Menegola, Dahlhaus
INJURIES
Richmond: Vlastuin (concussion)
Geelong: Ablett (shoulder), Simpson (concussion)
Without trying to sound too fatalistic, watching this game unfold was like a flashback to 1992. The physicality and pressure of the opening term, followed on by the false dawn (and momentum-shifting late goal) of the second, the emergence of the matchwinner in the third and, in the final term, the realisation that this was most likely inevitable from the outset.
I guess the difference between the two being in ’92 the Cats’ flaws were exposed for the whole football world to see. That is the over-reliance on maybe six or seven highly talented individuals who needed more support from the lower tier. This time around, I think it’s fair to say they gave it everything.
It could have been worse but fortunately Geelong weren’t humiliated in the same way as the Tigers’ two previous grand final opponents. To add, as a Cats fan, I’m glad it was against a side that I’ve got plenty of admiration and respect for and they’re more than graceful in victory.
There will no doubt still be those in the hoops calling for Chris Scott’s head on a pike but he got the team there and they toughed it out against the very best. No one else got close.
Very nicely summed up by you Adam. Funnily enough, I watched 92 in its entirety on Fox Footy on Friday night. Perhaps it was an omen.
Normally, I would have been doing the same thing. After all, any game is better than no game at all and despite being a loss it’s one I came to terms with a while back courtesy of the chapter Martin Flanagan wrote on Geelong in Southern Sky, Western Oval. Really put it all in perspective.
But on Grand Final eve, I figured best not to temp fate.