Round 10 v Port — roll out the barrel
Geelong have made an art form in the last few years of the uninspiring win, particularly at home — one where you watch the whole thing, mostly find it frustrating and/or boring, learn absolutely nothing about how the side is going overall, and they get it done in about half a quarter of decent footy.
This game was the absolute epitome of that. The third term was the magic quarter this time around, and it was enough to get past a pretty lacklustre Port outfit. It wasn’t a bad game as such — well, the first quarter was definitely bad — but it definitely wasn’t a good game. Honestly, you’d get more entertainment out of watching the scrutineers count the votes in the electorate of Deakin. I implore you not to seek it out on Kayo. Instead simply watch this video of Jeremy Cameron’s torp on the three quarter time siren:
I watched it, so you don’t have to
It was pretty clear the way it started this one wasn’t going to be a classic. We dribbled through the first four behinds of the game before they kicked a couple. This pretty much summed up our first quarter:
I simply can’t get over this attempt on goal. I’m dying to know the thought process that went into the shot. I’m guessing he recognised he couldn’t do it on his left foot, but the idea not to try and get back around the other way or to find an option is so funny. I really want someone to interview Close and ask the question — it’s probably my favourite moment of the season so far.
Meanwhile, while they were using the ball a lot better than us, even in the second quarter when they went a couple of kicks ahead I didn’t feel too worried about the result of this one. I figured our quality would tell, and it was the third term that separated the sides — we kicked 5.3 to their 1.0 straight and were dominant with and around the footy. The barrel from Jez on three quarter time pretty much ended the game as a contest, and it was academic from there.
As we so often do in those Geelong-y wins, we got the contested footy on our terms, but it’s how we did that was the interesting thing. Guthrie was the best contested player on the ground (16 contested possessions), but the next best four Cats were Cameron (13), Tom Hawkins (12), Mark Blicavs (12), and Sam de Koning (10). They’re not all contested marks either — Jez took three, Hawk and DSK two each and Blitz none. It’s wild to have four talls pick up double figure contested possessions in a game — indeed it was a career high for Cameron — and it largely accounts for the +29 CP discrepancy towards Geelong. Now I’ll take a contested footy win however we can get it, especially this year, but it doesn’t entirely feel sustainable and it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for our midfield, which continues to be a cause for huge concern.
Speaking of causes for huge concern: Patrick Dangerfield was subbed off late for Gryan Miers after not looking comfortable all day. It was well-reported he was crook in the lead up — I read some tweets saying he was spewing pre-game — but it was his troublesome calf that saw him taken off, and he’ll now miss about a month of footy. The club is saying it’s a block of conditioning, but it’s hard to really know what’s going on — the Cats are surely amongst the most opaque club when it comes to reporting injuries. One thing that is certain is that Dangerfield hasn’t been right all season and the couple of weeks he took off didn’t refresh him, so hopefully this month or so does the trick. It’s an interesting test for head of medical and conditioning services Harry Taylor.
Also something to keep an eye on: we were averaging 15.6 marks inside 50 a game coming into this one and took five for the day, all after half time. Hopefully a sign of a bad day (or a particularly good one for Dan Houston, Tom Jonas and Tom Clurey) and not that we’ve been sussed.
Now there’s a couple of players whose contributions I want to highlight in this one. The first is Jeremy Cameron. There’s a perception that Cameron is a luxury player or purely a cream on top kind of guy, and he can certainly function like that. But when he’s allowed off the leash like he was on Saturday, he can be unstoppable. Given freedom to roam and play almost a high-half forward role at times, he picked up 24 touches — including the aforementioned 13 contested —12 score involvements, eight inside 50s, four marks (three of those contested) three clearances, a game high 629 metres gained(!), and 3.1. Something Jez has over other blokes his size is a big tank and serious athleticism. Chris Scott chucked him into the midfield in the last term and he looked completely at home — he even went to a centre bounce — and it led Luke Darcy on Triple M to muse that he could be a Richo-style winger if he wanted. Personally I’m all for midfield Jez — a bloke that big and athletic would be bloody hard to stop when he gets going. Plus it gets us closer to the dream chaos centre bounce of Stanley, Blicavs, Rohan and Cameron.
Secondly, Cam Guthrie. He’s been our best mid for a couple of years but he put up proper monster numbers in this game: 38 touches, 16 contested, 13 score involvements, 10 clearances — I make that a quadruple double. Tack on four marks, four inside 50s, three tackles, and 400 metres gained and it’s a pretty bloody complete game for an inside mid. 13 of those touches came in the third term alone, including eight contested, which is something we’re gonna need to see a lot of this season if we’re gonna make a dint. Simply put Guthrie is a senior player now, an All-Australian and best and fairest winner in a grand final year, and we need him to lead this midfield.
VOTES
5. Jeremy Cameron
4. Cam Guthrie
3. Tyson Stengle
2. Tom Stewart
1. Sam de Koning
LEADERBOARD
1. Tom Stewart (21)
2. Jeremy Cameron (19)
3. Zach Tuohy (15)
4. Tom Hawkins (14)
4. Tyson Stengle (14)
6. Isaac Smith (12)
7. Mark Blicavs (11)
8. Patrick Dangerfield (8)
9. Mitch Duncan (7)
10. Cam Guthrie (6)
10. Joel Selwood (6)
11. Brad Close (5)
12. Sam de Koning (4)
13. Max Holmes (3)
14. Brandan Parfitt (2)
14. Rhys Stanley (2)
15. Luke Dahlhaus (1)
OBSERVATIONS
- I love that the club socials do the fan angle stuff, a really cool digital content idea and execution. They put together a great one for Jezza’s torp:
- Also, anyone whinging that Cameron went off his line is an enemy of football. This is the kind of stuff we want to see in footy surely — a proper expression of craft and skill.
- Brad Close could have been the difference in this game if he could have split the sticks. His best performance was against Sydney in round 2 in a loss, but at some point this year he will straight up win us a game. I’m interested to see if he can make the move a little further up the field and start getting some midfield minutes at some point.
- Tyson Stengle, again. Averaging 14.3 touches, 3.5 inside 50s and two goals a game — surely very few at the club saw such a consistent output when they picked him. It was awesome to see him light up the Djilang game in the Indigenous guernsey, and his first goal was one the game frankly didn’t deserve.
- Sam de Koning is quietly putting together a properly great season, and looks to be the best young key defender getting around. He leads the comp in contested marks for any key defender, and a leads the Rising Star crop in a bunch of other categories. We appear to have a generational talent on our hands here.
- Not much in the way of footy for Gary Rohan, but a couple of massive physical interventions showed some of what we’d been missing with him out of the side. One time in particular his pure pace and physicality created a contest where there wasn’t one, and then he halved it and created a stoppage.
- Speaking of massive physical interventions, Lachie Jones had a decent crack at kicking Joel Selwood’s head off at one point. The first angle looked ugly af, but from the reverse it was clear Selwood had his arm up and had fended it off.
- A duck broken for Jake Kolodjashnij: coming into the game he’d kicked two goals for a total of zero wins and two losses. Saturday was his first ever goal in a win.
- Rhys Stanley and Quinton Narkle were late outs, meaning Blicavs was one out in the ruck again, a position I love for him. Would have no problem with that staying the case for a few weeks yet, let Stanley really get back to full fitness.
- Sam Menegola is still a week away from playing VFL apparently. I think we are seriously missing his presence in the middle.
NEXT WEEK
Adelaide are coming to Geelong, and they can’t bring Taylor Walker due to health and safety protocols, plus it sounds like Josh Rachele won’t make the trip either. With those outs it’s difficult to see the Crows making life too difficult for us, but we haven’t exactly been a beacon of consistency, so who really knows? Most likely it will be a win almost exactly like the Port game, but maybe we’ll shake it up by turning it on in a different quarter, or perhaps it will be Brad Close or Gary Rohan who really turn it on. Maybe Sam de Koning will even get a Rising Star nomination.
