In what has been quite a bonkers season to this point, this fixture showcased not one, but two unpredictable Jekyll-and-Hyde teams doing their best to shake off the oft-bestowed fraud label and show their mettle for September.
It was the Western Bulldogs vs. Geelong. A western suburb of Melbourne vs…. a more western suburb of Melbourne. And in a display that not many saw coming, despite the duel taking place at a cattery, the Bulldogs tore their feline opponents to shreds, (as, I’d like to point out, would happen in real life). Let’s see how it happened.
A fine balance
In the first quarter and much of the second, the surface resembled a pitch from an early 2000s PES edition, courtesy of the recent weather. It was muddy, it was wet, and players were slipping all over the place. Such unfavourable conditions dictated that effective play needed to involve the right mixture of delicateness, directness and risk. Kick the ball too long, and the opponent would rebound with ease. Faff about with the ball too much, and chances of a turnover increased with each disposal. Play it safe and go via the wings, and you’d struggle to put three handballs in a chain together.
It was the Dogs that adapted more quickly to this situation. They weren’t quite at Harlem Globetrotter levels, but they frequently took the right option in transition, as opposed to the Cats, who all too often would take half a dozen disposals to travel 50m upfield. Although the quarter-time score of two goals to zero didn’t exactly blow onlookers away, it was clear which team was playing the more effective brand of football. It strikes me that the conditions probably favoured the Dogs’ brigade of runners/kickers as opposed to Geelong’s kick-mark style, but you still need to be able to execute your skills, and to their credit the Dogs did, at least until they had a shot at goal (at which point motor skills went out the window).
Clean pick-ups
For the wettest and slipperiest period of the game, the Dogs’ ability to handle the ball cleanly in pressure situations was incredibly impressive. I’d like to specifically shout out Cody Weightman here, who had some absolutely cracking half-volley pick-ups and extractions that enabled a teammate to run into space and launch a scoring opportunity for his team. That sort of cleanliness in such a dour game is worth its weight in gold, frankincense and myrrh.
He wasn’t alone, though.
Lachlan Bramble, recycled from Hawthorn, also had a couple of brilliant moments picking the ball up, the highlight being a tap to his own advantage out of a 50-50, a gather and a lace-out pass to Naughton at the top of the goalsquare, who put the game to bed. I for one was extremely puzzled at his recruitment, especially as the Dogs already had a fair few of those undersized no-man’s-land-types, but fair play to him, he made me eat my words in this game.
Throwball
The Dogs are famous for their little illegal flick passes from the bottom of packs, but Geelong joined them in supreme mastery of the skill today. I must’ve counted at least twenty throws that went uncalled. Obviously, I had the benefit of the TV camera’s close-up, with the ump being on the other side of the play, but man, at times it was absolutely blatant.
At one point Mark Blicavs literally fell forward and scooped the ball onto the ground, aiming for it to bounce into a teammate’s lap. I completely understand that the umpires don’t want anything to do with the slippery slope that involves guessing at calls, but surely even they would’ve picked up on the incredible swiftness with which some ‘handballs’ were made out of contested situations. I’m not claiming to know what the solution is, but it is a little jarring to see such a unique feature of the game put aside in favour of convenience, and even more jarring to see that it works so effectively. If the next fixture between these sides is on a dry deck, I’ll be watching keenly to see if similar shenanigans take place.
Not sure on midfielder Stewart
Someone more informed than me about the inner workings of Geelong will be able to answer this, but I’m not sure whether Tom Stewart in midfield is worth the payoff, even if they’ve been undermanned in there, at times. He’s not overly quick and he isn’t a great handballer in tight. Yes, he throws his heart and soul into his midfield work, as you’d expect, but it seems to take his silky edge away. He’s at his best when he has the game in front of him, when he can float in and intercept at half-back, look ahead, spot a teammate 55m away, and deliver the ball to said teammate, complete with polka dot gift wrapping and a complimentary Tim Tam.
He still had 26 touches but it was eons away from his most effective games. No Atkins, Bruhn and Clark probably made it difficult to form a midfield rotation, but in my humble opinion, I think Holmes, Dangerfield, Bowes, Miers and Mannagh probably would’ve all been capable of shouldering a bit more of the midfield responsibility. It’ll be interesting to see where Scott plays Stewart in the coming weeks, with their season teetering as precariously as it is.
Cats and water
There seemed to be a noticeable lift in the intensity of the Geelong unit (and the crowd) once the stadium drainage kicked in and the conditions dried out a bit. It begged the question for me of whether they were really up for the mud-slinging contest that characterised the early stages of the game. Footy is literally associated with muddy surfaces and good old fashioned blood-and-guts arm-wrestles, but the Geelong team seemed like they’d have preferred to have been at home by the fireplace with a nice cup of tea, which I found disappointing, as I’m sure did their fans.
Effort is required in rain, hail and shine, lads. There’s no picking and choosing, especially at this end of the season. The crowd ended up putting in a reasonably impressive performance, no doubt assisted in finding their voice by some questionable umpiring decisions in the second half, but yeah, the team’s going to want to iron out any tendencies of complacency or unwillingness, or they’ll find themselves at the bottom of the logjam with nowhere to go but southward.
Pillars
The Dogs suddenly seem to have an embarrassment of riches down back, with Buku Khamis and Rory Lobb both having very impressive games (Lobb having had an impressive month), and Liam Jones still to return from a knee injury. Lobb received the commentators’ plaudits (is there anything commentators froth over more than a recently emerged star?) and there was a compelling case to be made for him, with his 14 intercept possessions, nine marks and heavy involvement in the Dogs’ launches from the back half. But Khamis was seriously good too, and his impact belied the boffins’ assessment of his game. Every time Geelong seemed to be out in space and hurtling towards their attacking 50, it’d be Buku who got in the way to take the relieving mark. If Champion Data invented a stat titled ‘importance-of-moments-in-which-intercepts-are-made’ (not beyond them, imho) then Buku would’ve been BOG.
It was a comprehensive performance from the key defensive unit, and while they were helped by the fact that Tom Hawkins was absent and that Gary Rohan is Gary Rohan, I think Dogs’ fans can sit back safely in the fact that their team balance is as good as it’s been in a long time. Maybe since the Eade days. Maybe since the Whitten days. Maybe since the VFA days. Who knows?
The cliff (probably not, but still)
Geelong’s immunity to falling down the ladder has been well-documented, and whilst there were more chinks made in their armour last year than in the previous twenty, no one’s quite written them off yet. However, watching this game and others this year, it has been apparent to me that the meat of their team is pretty bloody lean. The guys that hold the team together are old. And the young guys seem like bit-part players, and at the risk of sounding short-sighted, I think a fair few of them will remain such.
Ollie Dempsey’s a potentially good player (not going to throw around the ‘potential star’ label yet), De Koning is good, Bruhn is ok, Holmes is very good, O Henry is ok, Bowes is ok, Knevitt is inconclusive, Humphries has played three games, Clark hasn’t shown much at all as yet. Now, any team with the recruiting history and general processes of Geelong cannot be counted out, even if the Grim Reaper and Father Time are knocking in unison at the front door, but I struggle to see a quick regeneration for them.
It will be interesting to see how their perpetually competent brains trust navigate the tricky waters they’re entering, and I have no doubt they’ll navigate more smoothly than several other rebuilding teams I could mention, but it really does feel like they don’t have many nooks and crannies to hide in now. Could the year in which Geelong finish lower than 12th be nearly upon us? It might. It just might.
Young blood
I’d like to give a quick shout out to the young guns of the Dogs. Ryley Sanders doesn’t seem to have settled in overly well, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see him end his career elsewhere, Tasmanian team notwithstanding, but has still provided solid output in the midfield in his limited opportunities.
This was my first time watching Joel Freijah live and I was impressed with the way he moved and the sense he had for the game. He seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of where to go and how to position himself in order to achieve the best possible outcome. One handball where he positioned himself well and handballed with his non-preferred hand underneath an outstretched defender’s arm comes to mind, as well as a handball he intercepted where everyone except poor Sam De Koning could tell what was going to unfold. Freijah made it look so easy that it’d be easy to blame De Koning for telegraphing the handball, but that was pure footy intelligence. Plenty of players’ brains wouldn’t have commanded them to take those quick steps in order to make the intercept.
Lastly, Sam Darcy’s praises have already been more or less sung, but it bears repeating that he’s a fairly terrifying prospect. An athletic 205cm beanpole who has no trouble picking the ball up and doing the tough stuff (11 tackles in this one) brings to mind thoughts of Yao Ming and selective breeding. Look out, key defenders of the future.
And that wraps up my thoughts for this game. Dogs 13.17.95-Cats 7.6.48.
A comprehensive victory that doesn’t show anything concrete on account of the two teams possessing the volatility of an active volcano, but that will nevertheless have significant bearing on ladder positions once the H&A season wraps up. One could say that it… ahem… was a result that will help shape the eight. Till next time.
