Cats claw back control to come out on top of Crows

Geelong champion Gary Ablett gets a handball away despite the best efforts of Adelaide’s Bryce Gibbs. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Geelong at Geelong has been such an impossible assignment for more than a decade now that it sometimes feels like visitors put the cue in the rack before even running out on the ground.

History certainly didn’t suggest it was going to be much different for Adelaide on Friday night, either, the Crows having won just three of their 17 previous trips to the Cattery, the last of those wins 16 years ago, and the home side having won 29 of 33 games there over the past four years.

Adelaide had been getting steadily better the longer this season had gone on, having won seven of its last night games before this match. But this was always going to be a challenge on a whole different level.

For a while, the Crows were more than up for it, too, at one stage early in the second quarter leading by 20 points, the prospect of becoming only the third different club to beat the Cats on their own turf over that four-year period very real.

But this is Geelong we’re talking about, the most consistently-performed team of 2019 by some margin, and after a rare reversal last week against Port Adelaide, determined to allow no doubts to begin creeping in.

The Cats’ hauling back of that early deficit was thus as convincing as some its most emphatic wins, seizing back control of a midfield battle which had got away from them early, and finally, that dominance reflected on the scoreboard.

You could sense Adelaide had made a pact to hit the ground running within only a couple of minutes of the start, by which time they’d already won the bulk of the clearances and contested ball, and had a goal on the board to boot courtesy of Paul Seedsman on the run.

Gary Ablett levelled things up after an errant handball from Brodie Smith turned the ball over for Patrick Dangerfield to pounce and dish off, but Adelaide was hardly deterred.

Impressive young ruckman Reilly O’Brien marked strongly in front and got the Crows in front again, then skipper Taylor Walker proved too strong for Mark Blicavs and repeated the dose.

Now the Cats fired back with a brace of goals from Cam Guthrie and Tom Hawkins, before Adelaide kicked clear again through youngsters Jordan Gallucci and Elliott Himmelberg, the latter following yet another disputed goal review, Rhys Stanley booting another on the siren for Geelong.

But the most significant stats for Adelaide at the first break were plus nine for clearances and plus 12 for contested ball, Rory Sloane and Matt Crouch the significant midfield drivers.

And when Lachie Murphy and Hugh Greenwood booted the first couple of goals of the second term, the scoreboard too was starting to look similarly lopsided, the Crows now with a 20-point lead.

Geelong needed to find something quickly. And it did, the fightback beginning once the Cats began to wrest some control back in the middle of the ground.

Hawkins brought them closer, then, after a thrilling passage of intense pressure play, Tim Kelly bounced one through to reduce the gap to eight points. Jed Bews, who’d put the clamps right on Eddie Betts, snuck forward to make it only a point the difference, and by the time Hawkins hit the post after the half-time siren, Geelong led.

The intervening 20 minutes prior to the second half did nothing to alter the momentum, either. Now it was Adelaide doing the hanging in. And the Crows did a good job of it.

When Gryan Miers, impressive again in the small forward role, snapped his first of the night three minutes into the third term, Geelong had doubled Adelaide’s contested ball rate since midway through the second quarter and had enjoyed, incredibly, 18 inside 50 entries to just one in the same period.

But the Crows snaffled what chances they could muster. Some deft twists and turns out of trouble from Walker set Smith into space and he goalled.

Jordan Clark, another Geelong youngster having a fine night gave the Cats breathing space, but not for long, Seedsman booting a ripper from a tight angle on the run.

The dam wall looked likely to bust open not long after, though, as Miers bounced through another, and then just four seconds before the bell, Guthrie, too, put his second on the board, the lead now back out to 14 points.

The deluge never came, at least on the scoreboard. But Geelong was now so firmly in control of proceedings that the result looked inevitable, even after a Kelly “goal” was overturned early in the final term.

A shocking shank from Blicavs fell into Mitch Duncan’s arms and the gap was now the best part of four goals.

And it was all over when a bouncing ball somehow split a large pack of players like the waters had parted for Moses, and Kelly strolled into an open goal, this one counting, the margin 28 points, and with only five minutes left, the result done and dusted.

Adelaide had made a better fist of it than most visitors to the Cattery manage.

But this is the most pronounced home ground advantage in the AFL. And when it just happens to be at the disposal of what is currently also the AFL’s best team, that is a bridge too far for just about anyone.

GEELONG 4.1 7.6 11.9 14.12 (96)
ADELAIDE 5.4 7.5 9.7 10.9 (69)

CROWD: 28,108 at GMHBA Stadium