Hey, guess what – the Cats are right in the mix, yet again.
You know how supporters of every team have an element of hope about them coming into a new year? They might be rebuilding, topping up for a run at finals… I wonder what the Cats have?
Belief?
Of course they do.
A sense of the inevitable?
Maybe. They know they have the players and the system to contend again.
The feeling that they have some unfinished business?
Yep, they were ten minutes away from another Grand Final.
People say that winning is habitual. They say that once a team knows what to do to get over the line, it becomes part of their DNA, and it has been a part of this Geelong Football Club for the… hmmm, past 20 bloody years! No bottoming out, no settling for what others clubs willingly accept, no – this club just continues to defy expectations and thumb its nose at the AFL’s equalisation policy.
Though there have been others that have had purple patches, when it comes to sustained excellence, Geelong have it down-pat.
Just about, anyway. One flag in the past 13 years probably doesn’t reflect that, but thery’re always thereabouts, always in with a genuine shot.
They have recruited a player with one of the highest ceilings in the game, and are no longer perceived as the Dad’s Army of the league, handing that title over to the Magpies.
How much damage can Geelong do in 2025?
If you’re an opposition supporter, the word ‘catastrophic’ leaps to mind.
It’s that time of year, already.
The break after Christmas and New Year is over and 2024 is well and truly in the rear-vision mirror. The holidays are finished for AFL players, and the hard stuff starts now. Yes, the teams had been training for well over a month prior to Christmas, but as we head into 2025, the stakes are raised, and the intensity increases.
This is where premierships are won and lost. This is where improvements are made and lists come together. This is where the kids show if they’re serious or not. New faces, new colours, old heads with renewed passion… so much feeds into the making of a contender. And as the days tick down toward the intra-club clashes, practice games, and eventually the real stuff, questions are raised about each team and how they’re going to perform in this new season.
And that’s where HB and The Mongrel come in.
We don’t do things by halves here, at The Mongrel Punt. When we do a season preview, we go all out to make sure it is the best, most comprehensive coverage you’ll receive. We pride ourselves on it. If you are going to read one season preview for your team, or any team, this series will provide it.
The way it works is as follows.
Each club has a minimum of 15 questions asked about the upcoming season, their coaches, their players, and their expectations. The answers are not glossed over. We dive deep on each and every one of them – some singular answers would normally be long enough for an entire column. The first five questions/answers are free for you to consume. The next 10-14 for each club are for our members, including a special appearance from Mrs Mongrel to throw her two cents in the mix.
Isn’t it a bit early for a season preview? Well, I suppose, but do you know how long it takes to write seven-to-nine thousand words? That’s 18 x 8,000… gets out the calculator… that’s 144,000 words. The average novel is about 85,000 words, so buckle the hell up with these previews; we’re going deeper than ever.
Also, if there are any issues that arise after the publication of the preview for any team, they will be covered in standalone articles to act as additions to this preview.
You will not read a deeper season preview than this – I guarantee it. This is where we start the run to the new season, and believe me – nobody does it better than The Mongrel.
And now we turn our attention to the boys from Sleepy Hollow.
1 – IF THE CATS GET THE BEST OF BAILEY SMITH, WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE CLUB?
I want to take you back a little, if I could. Just buckle up… jump in the Mongrel Time Machine, and… BAM!
Here we are, back in 2021. The Western Bulldogs are running through the AFL Finals, and emerging as a force in the team is a young man with a filthy mullet. His name is Bailey Smith, and during the finals, he averages 23.3 disposals and 2.66 goals per game, including two first quarter goals of his four in a Preliminary Final that tore the heart out of the Port Adelaide Power.
Ah yes, peak Bailey Smith, before the ACL, before the time away to deal with mental health issues, and before copping a suspension for illicit drug use.
That’s the version the Cats are after, and if they get it, he adds a dimension to this midfield group that turns the cohort into something special.
But it is also a pretty big “if”.
I am not looking at the mental health and drug use stuff – I am always worried about players returning from ACL injuries, though. Having been down this road, myself, I know first-hand that there is as much a psychological barrier to returning to your best as there is a physical one. Every twist, turn, and landing comes with a certain hesitancy, or a worry that your body is going to betray you. It takes a while to get past that and trust that your body will stand up the way it used to.
And that’s the hurdle Smith will need to jump in the early stages of 2025, as he not only adjusts to life in a new environment, with a new coach, but battles that little man on his shoulder telling him to “be careful”.
Luckily for Smith, he is coming into a team that has been able to make adjustments over the years. That they were two kicks from the Grand Final in 2024, despite losing arguably the best power forward of the last 20 years, speaks volumes about the way the Cats modify their game plan to play to strengths and cover their weaknesses.
Internally, I am not sure Smith will have the same expectations placed upon him that supporters have of him. The Cats know he has not played a game since 2023, and they will likely expect some rust. His last eight games of his AFL life were, by his own standards, pretty ordionary. He is, in many ways, rebuilding his AFL career. They’ll expect him to work his way into form, and as such, will have contingencies in place while he does.
The destination is what it’s all about for Smith – his best form – but Geelong, as a club, are intelligent enough to make sure the journey is not more arduous than it needs to be.
If they get peak Bailey Smith, then that’s wonderful. But if they get a building Bailey Smith, who is going to require time and patience, then that’s fine, as well. They’re Geelong – they have made their name on working this stuff out as they go, and continuing to win in the interim.
It’ssomething others have tried and failed at. And it’s what makes this team so good.
2 – IS THIS THE SEASON MAX HOLMES BECOMES ‘THE MAN’?
Max Holmes is a special player, and is destined to be one of the stars of the Geelong midfield for the next eight or nine years. However, there is a perception that he is the bloke to carry it, and I am not sure whether that’ll be the case.
You see, as good as Holmes is – and I do think he is on the way to being excellent – he is a little way away from winning his own footy consistently. At the moment, he is more suited to playing the first or second release player at stoppages.
He was ranked seventh at the club for clearances in 2024, and fifth for contested possessions. He is getting plenty of it (ranked first in disposals) but he is more of an outside player than an inside beast.
And you know what – that’s fine. Not everyone has to be a crash-and-bash player.
I’ve often found that clubs make the mistake of forcing players to be something they’re not. I still reckon Carlton are putting a square peg in a round hole by pushing Sam Walsh into the contest when his best work comes when he can run with the footy on the outside. Holmes is similar in that regard, but I think he is more damaging by foot than Walsh – why push him into an area where he is going to pressured on every kick when he can kill teams on the outside?
To say Geelong are more cerebral than Carlton in terms of their player deployment is probably reflected by their success over the past however-many years, and I reckon they know exactly what they have with Max Holmes.
He has spent time running off half-back, and when you look at his numbers, he attended just 32% of centre bounces in 2024. Geelong know what they’re doing, and they won’t rush him to be “the man” in the midfield when it is clear that he can do far more damage away from congestion.
With Tanner Bruhn and Bailey Smith joining the likes of Patrick Dangerfield, Tom Atkins, and occasionally, Tom Stewart, as clearance players, Max Holmes can become ‘the man’ in many other ways for the Cats, and if his 2024 form is anything to go off, the Geelong forwards are going to be licking their lips when he becomes part of those handball chains through the middle and lowers his eyes.
That’s his value. That’s where the damage will be at its most devastating.
3 – IS OLLIE HENRY THE MOST UNDERRATED FORWARD IN THE COMPETITION?
I have this sneaky feeling we’re about to see a young forward take the reins in some games in 2025, and it is not Shannon Neale. Sure, Neale will compete in the air, bring the footy to ground, and do the things a deep forward should, but it is Ollie Henry that looks like the breakout forward, in my eyes.
And really, he has already “broken out” as an AFL player. It’s just that people tend to ignore him when they talk about the potency of the Geelong forward line. He has an element of Jack Gunston, and a little bit of Jack Riewoldt about him, inasmuch as he can find the footy in traffic and make something out of nothing, He has beautiful hands, and knows where the goals are.
With 78 goals in his two seasons at Geelong, the 22-year-old has done little wrong, and is looming as a massive threat in 2025.
Playing alongside Jeremy Cameron, and in 2023, in the shadow of Tom Hawkins, has probably aided him in flying under the radar, but if you don’t see the class in this kid, I reckon you should probably start petitioning the Fred Hollows Foundation to save your sight.
What do I see from him?
This is the season Henry jumps up over two goals per game.
You know how many players were able to do that in 2024?
Just 13, and the Cats already have one of them, in Jeremy Cameron. Having Henry join him at that level provides Geelong with the type of one-two punch that they had in previous years when Hawkins was fit. Not to the same level, of course, but in terms of offensive threats, 4-5 goals each week from the two main avenues, means that defences have to give them respect. And when that happens, players like Stengle, Miers, Neale, and Close, can swoop in and make the most of the opportunities that are afforded them.
In the off-season following the 2023 season, I posted a poll in our Facebook group asking which of the two young forwards people would like to have on their team in 2024 – Ollie Henry or Jye Amiss. The results swung heavily in Amiss’ favour, given his 2023 season, but after the 2025 season, I am eager to see how much that gap has closed.
A full season from Henry, offering something vastly different from that which Hawkins provided for so long, may be the change up that allows the Cats to stay in the hunt for yet another flag. We all know he’s talented. We all know he can do the amazing. Now, he just has to demonstrate it week in, and week out.
Ollie Henry – 45-50 goals in 2025, if he plays every week. Come back to me on it.
4 – IS OLLIE DEMPSEY’S FUTURE ON THE WING, OR ELSEWHERE?
I had a bit of a back-and-forth with someone during the 2024 season, and I was getting a bit of a lecture about including Ollie Dempsey in our Robbie Flower Wingman of the Year Award.
And a big thank you to the Flower family for the permission to name that award after their champion.
The bloke was adamant that Dempsey was half forward, and had never stepped foot on the wing. Seriously, it made me wonder whether he was watching games, or listening on the radio (“Oh love… can you turn up the wireless?”) as it was painfully evident to me that not only was Dempsey playing on the wing, but he was doing so in such a disciplined fashion, that it allowed him to consistently get open inside 50 and hit the scoreboard.
So, that’s where the confusion lay for old mate.
Dempsey snagged three goals on three different occasions in 2024, as he collected the Ron Evans Medal as the league’s Rising Star, but whilst I loved that he hit the scoreboard, watching him “hold his line” was the thing that impressed me most. There were games where his opponent was drawn to the contest, but Dempsey flat out refused to go outside his mandate, and remained on the outside, backing his teammates to win the footy.
And when they did, his opponent would look back over his shoulder, and guess who was in 30 metres of space and ready to attack?
Our old friend, Ollie.
To me, this jumped out as a young player immediately buying into the team structure, and being willing to both sacrifice his own game to retain the structure Chris Scott wanted, but also have an awareness to push forward at the ebegan to xact right moment.
He punished teams. He punished his direct opponent. And he ran hard both ways.
Despite others lamenting the suspensions of Sam Darcy and Harley Reid preventing them from eligibility for the Rising Star Award, I thought Dempsey was a more-than-worthy winner. After a trying first couple of years, he came into a contending side, and not only held his place, but genuinely made the team better. Yes, he did start at half-forward at some centre bounces, eventually, as the Cats began to rotate players through the wing, but it was in the outside role that he played his best footy, and I would not hesitate to deploy him there again in 2025.
When you look at the best wingmen in the game – and over the past few years, they have been named Josh Daicos and Errol Gulden – a committed and disciplined Ollie Dempsey could be the next young player to join them at the top of the tree.
Put him on the wing, leave him on the wing, and reap the rewards he provides.
5 – COULD WE NOW SEE THE BEST OF JACK HENRY?
Whilst many will look to the role of Tom Stewart as the key to the Geelong back six, the return to fitness of Jack Henry in 2024 was an enormous boost to the club.
After just 11 games in 2023, his 25 games in 2024 indicate that his foot problems that required three surgeries, might be well and truly behind him.
In a defence that boasts some of the more versatile players in the league (Stewart, Sam De Koning), the stability that Jack Henry adds to the team cannot be denied.
Ranked in the top ten for total intercepts in 2024, Jack is back, and back in a big way. But you wouldn’t know it, given the scant amount of attention he received from outside Geelong.
I admit, when I heard that he was going in for a third foot surgery, I was wondering whether or not the Cats were going to have to start making plans for life without, or at least life with a severely reduced, Jack Henry. But his 2024 season put those fears to rest.
At 26, these are now his peak years, as the Cats once again manage to cycle through high-class operators in the back half. Think about it – cycle through the names that have underpinned this defence during their current glory years (and by glory years, I am talking about 2006-2024). Matthew Scarlett, Corey Enright, Tom Harley, Harry Taylor, Mark Blicavs, Andrew Mackie, Tom Lonergan, Tom Stewart, and now, Jack Henry and Sam De Koning back there… the club has been blessed with exquisite talent.
What do we expect from Henry in 2025?
To be honest, more of the same that we saw in 2024 would suffice, but with that season under his belt, what we’re likely to see is a player who now has complete confidence in his body again. As mentioned in the Bailey Smith section, coming off significant injuries plays on your mind, and whilst Henry has been around long enough to compartmentalise these things, having 12 months of injury-free footy will do wonders for him.
I expect strong intercept grabs, strength in the contest, and a real “leader of men” vibe from him in 2025. Henry served a long apprenticeship under a couple of the names on that list of greats above, and he would be keen to have his name mentioned alongside them when all is said and done.
2024 was his first step back on the way to being there. 2025 is the year to put it in stone.
The next 14 questions are for our members. Option to join below.
This is just under a third of our preview. The rest is available exclusively to our members. People, we give value. No same old gabage you’re going to hear from ten others, taking turns in mimicking each other. No played out opinions. Thoughtful and comprehensive – that’s what we aspire to provide in these previews, and your support makes them bigger and better every year. Jump on board.
