There’s an obvious smoother look to how the Cats are operating in 2019. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
We have short attention spans in football these days. Always looking for the next big thing, particularly a team on the rise. And we’re easily bored when they don’t live up to the hype quickly enough.
Geelong might have been a victim of it. It’s a fair while now since the Cats were racking up premierships, and much of their time since has been spent hanging around the upper echelons of the AFL ladder while rarely threatening to get to the top of it.
It hasn’t been for want of trying. The home-grown produce which helped deliver those three premierships in five years gave way a while back to imports from elsewhere, seemingly to little avail.
Geelong landed among a sea of imports the biggest of fish of them all in Patrick Dangerfield, who immediately gave the club another Brownlow Medal, but not a flag. Last year, Gary Ablett, the prodigal son, returned to the fold, which made for a nice story, but still no premiership.
What the Cats have done is rack up a series of finals defeats, nine September losses from 12 appearances since the 2011 flag, the last of them, a comprehensive loss to Melbourne in last year’s elimination final, particularly damaging to Geelong’s status as a perennial contender.
The glass half-empty and easier take was that this was a team forever destined to be good but not quite good enough. But the less “sexy” glass half-full attitude was that if you’re somewhere around the mark it doesn’t necessarily take a lot to bridge the gap. And already in 2019, it seems like Geelong’s glass has not only been completely replenished, but is overflowing.
Geelong coach Chris Scott has spoken at length over the last few seasons about the need for players, no matter how experienced, to “gel” with their new teammates. And often with good reason.
Even last year, while Geelong statistically held up well in most areas, particularly defensively, it was hard to nail down any perceivable game style the Cats were pursuing, whilst their effort could be inconsistent.
The numbers so far this season don’t reveal any great transformation, either. But there is an obvious smoother look to how the Cats operate, not necessarily measurable, but present in how they move the ball, how they link up in attack and how they support each other.
The gelling has happened. And Geelong now not only looks slicker for it, but appears to have far more strings to its bow than the troika of Dangerfield, Ablett and Joel Selwood we used to read about incessantly.
The so-called bottom few players of the Cats’ 22 look a lot more imposing than they did, now largely younger players clearly on the improve. The likes of Gryan Miers, Charlie Constable, Tom Atkins and Esava Ratugolea have all had impact this season in a variety of roles.
Geelong had a deep enough midfield last season thanks to the “holy trinity”, the emergence of Tim Kelly, plus Sam Menegola and Mitch Duncan.
But now it bats deeper again, Constable and Atkins two more capable of winning their share of clearances and hard ball gets, giving Scott even more scope to use Joel Selwood on a wing, or Ablett more permanently as an incredibly dangerous small forward. Ruckman Rhys Stanley is proving another big asset in giving the Cats first use of the football.
Perhaps the most measurable indicator of Geelong’s significant improvement last year to this so far, though, is the one which counts the most, on the scoreboard.
The Cats weren’t too shabby on the scoring front in 2018, finishing the season the fourth highest-scoring team. They did, however, look one-dimensional at times, key forward Tom Hawkins the focus of a large percentage of their forward thrusts, and not enough ground-level “terriers” fighting to lock the ball inside 50.
This year, the contrast is stark, the obvious plus the addition of another couple of imports in Gary Rohan and Luke Dahlhaus, Atkins a perhaps unexpected bonus. Ratugolea, too, shapes as an obvious foil for Hawkins when the ball is banged long and high into the scoring zone.
Rohan is leading the Cats’ goalkicking with 15 at 2.5 per game. Ablett, now a permanent fixture near goals, is third with 10. In 2018, he kicked just 16 for the entire season. Miers is equal fourth, and Dahlhaus and Constable both in the top six.
The extra firepower and spread of goalkicking options now has Geelong the AFL’s highest-scoring team. At 98.1 points per game, it’s only about a goal more than the Cats were posting last season, but that just underlines the point about a little bit of improvement going a long way.
Geelong lost three games last season by less than a kick. Add that goal per game to its 2018 results and 13 wins and a position of eighth on the ladder would have become 16 wins and (with the second-best percentage in the competition) second spot.
And a double chance and a home final for the Cats might have cast a completely different complexion over the entire finals series.
Football is full of “ifs”, “buts” and “maybes”, of course, but that is an illustration of how, if the foundations are solid enough, a little can go a long way.
Geelong, it appears, is very much a contender again. And while any novelty about the Cats wore off a long time ago, perhaps this season it’s a case of the best story being the one which was right under your nose the whole time.
*This article first appeared at SPORTING NEWS.
Great article Rohan, and thanks as always for the excellent show.
Anyway, wanted to ask you about Tom Atkins. There’s a view in the Geelong fan base that he should be the first to be dropped when some of the more experienced injured players return. The view seems to be based on the relatively low disposal stats he gathers as well as a perceived lack of polish. However, I think he provides the sort of grunt and aggression that the Cats’ forward line has sorely been missing. He’s ranked third in tackles and really throws himself at it. This is gold for a team that periodically gets stuck with the handbagging label.
What do you think? Is he as important to the ‘new’ Geelong as the more visible Gary Rohan and Luke Dalhaus? Would you be in a hurry to drop him for a more lucrative possession-getter? I’m definitely in the minority on this question, and would be interested to hear your views.
None of the dozens of Cats fans I know think that about Atkins. He’s the new Max Rooke, may not get all the stats but does the role the team needs doing. We’d be a poorer side without him.
People focus too much on just ‘possessions’. But if all 22 players got 30 touches a game that would be 660 disposals which would be WAY too much. There simply is no need for every player to get that much ball. Plenty of other jobs need doing.