Pies’ pressure wins preliminary position

Taylor Adams is pumped after an early goal gets the Pies off to a great start. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Geelong sat atop the ladder for 21 of 23 weeks this AFL season. Collingwood wasn’t even in the top four for six weeks prior the final home and away round. But one authoritative September performance later, it is the Pies just one win away from another grand final, and the Cats on a precipice.

Collingwood’s 10-point qualifying final win over Geelong was commanding stuff. The Magpies brought the pressure all over the ground, and the Cats simply didn’t deal with it well, looking rattled at stages, and by the end of this game, completely out of ideas.

If that sounds strange of a game which finished with less than a two-goal margin, it’s not an exaggeration.

The Pies were even held scoreless for the entire final term and yet still looked easy winners for all but the final couple of minutes of it.

A very late goal to Geelong’s Tim Kelly made it a two-goal game with just under three minutes left. Tom Hawkins and Patrick Dangerfield had speculative shots at goal which ended up points. But even then, you didn’t feel the Cats were a genuine chance. And to be frank, they didn’t really deserve to be.

A semi-final against a West Coast team boasting height, strength and plenty of dash, at a venue with which the Eagles have coped very well in recent times, will be every bit as tough a challenge for Geelong as this game was. And without a significant improvement, one which will end the same way.

The whole football world is familiar with Geelong’s issues climbing back on the horse after an interruption to their momentum, no better example than their 5-5 record this season after heading to their break 11-1.

So perhaps another slovenly start after some time off shouldn’t have been that big a surprise. That, though, would be selling short the intensity with which Collingwood started this final.

To say the Pies were “on” at the start would be an understatement. They were fierce, dominant in most positions across the ground, and after a time, on the scoreboard, too.

The most tangible evidence of Collingwood’s superiority came in a three-goal burst in a four-minute period midway through the first term.

Taylor Adams, already conspicuous, snapped the first from a stoppage. Jaidyn Stephenson, back in the line-up after his 10-game absence through suspension, beat two Cat defenders and hit Jamie Elliott square on the chest. Elliott did the rest.

And then Stephenson himself cashed in, after two Geelong defenders flew for a high ball and a third, Jack Henry, also tried to get to the contest. He didn’t and the man he left behind, Stephenson, gratefully accepted the spoils and ran into an open goal.

Geelong by this stage still hadn’t even been into attack, the inside 50 count 10-0, and the alarm bells were ringing loudly.

Finally, the Cats’ composure arrived to help out. Tom Hawkins had a long shot touched on the line. Moments later, Gary Rohan had a hurried Luke Dahlhaus kick land in his lap and booted Geelong’s first. But Geelong then fluffed its lines again.

Rohan managed to put a gettable chance out on the full. Hawkins missed. And Elliott had his second for the Pies in easy fashion after being fed a Steele Sidebottom handball.

And the second term was pure déjà vu. Collingwood’s pressure had the Cats spooked, A hurried clearing kick from Mitch Duncan bounced up beautifully for the oncoming Jeremy Howe right on the 50-metre arc. Howe didn’t break stride, took the pill and let fly for his first goal of the season.

Elliott took on and beat two Cats, in what was becoming a recurring theme, fed the ball to Adam Treloar, and Adams got on the end of it for his second. By the time Will Hoskin-Elliott dribbled one through despite the attentions of Jake Kolodjashnij, the margin was out to 36 points and if it wasn’t game over, the fat lady was certainly warming up.

The rally from the Cats, given that context, was almost a surprise. It was impressive, too.

Brandon Parfitt’s goal was met with barely a smattering of applause, Geelong fans slightly stunned, stars the calibre of Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood barely visible. But now they’d get busy, too, and instantly the Cats looked a far more imposing combination.

With under two minutes remaining in the half, Gryan Miers slotted a beauty from deep in a forward pocket after Dangerfield picked him out. With just on a minute left, Zac Tuohy, running at a fair rate of knots curled a miraculous snap inside the right hand goal post.

Geelong had lost Mitch Duncan with a knee injury, a considerable blow to midfield stocks which needed all hands on deck. But the scoreboard was suddenly looking a lot healthier, 19 points an eminently retrievable deficit.

Was this the beginnings of the sort of turnaround with which Collingwood fans have become all too familiar over the years, never more painfully than in their last finals appearance at this same ground on grand final day last year?

Well, no, as it turned out. In a third term which was much more of a slog, just three goals were scored. And it was the Pies with two of them.

It took 10 minutes before Collingwood booted the first. And by then, any momentum the Cats had taken into half-time had well and truly dissipated.

Steele Sidebottom’s neat effort on the run was answered quickly enough by Sam Menegola. But it always seemed Geelong was providing a badly-needed response rather than itself seizing the initiative.

And when a textbook tap from the brilliant ruckman Brodie Grundy found Stephenson, who slipped a handball to Scott Pendlebury, the skipper coolly doing the rest from inside 50, it was 25 points the margin again well into time-on.

Remarkably, that was that for the Pies as far as scoring went. That shouldn’t undermine the quality of this performance, however. It was complete.

Geelong took the gamble of leaving out ruckman Rhys Stanley for the more mobile but hardly ruck-sized Sam Menegola, and paid the price, Grundy completely dominant not only in the hit-outs but around the ground.

Adams was superb, underlining how much Collingwood had missed his terrier-like qualities during his prolonged absence with injury. Sidebottom was prolific and dangerous, and in his 300th game, Pendlebury was, well, Pendlebury.

Collingwood’s defence was outstanding, Howe finishing with no fewer than 13 marks and 10 rebound 50s, Brayden Maynard having much the better of Gary Ablett, and Jordan Roughead making it tough for Hawkins all night.
The upshot of all that is that things will now be made tough for Geelong as a whole. That miserable post 2011 flag finals record now reads even worse at 3-10. And a little like this game’s final scoreboard, the way back right now feels even longer and less friendly than the path required actually is.

How the Cats respond will be one of the bigger tests of Chris Scott’s entire stint as their coach.

GEELONG 1.2 4.4 5.6 7.9 (51)
COLLINGWOOD 4.2 7.5 9.7 9.7 (61)

CROWD: 93,436 at the MCG