I was looking forward to this match up.
GWS were picked by many to finish top-4 this season, but have been in poor form, with three losses in a row before the trip to Grievous Bodily Harm Stadium (or whatever it’s called) where, remarkably, they have beaten Geelong the last four times they have played there – not many teams have done that once over recent years!
Both sides were missing some crucial players: Brent Daniels, Stephen Coniglio, Josh Kelly and Toby Bedford for GWS, with Bedford being the big one as you would have expected him to do a job on pin up boy/villain Bailey Smith. Geelong had their own injury woes coming in with both recognized ruckmen in Rhys Stanley and Toby Conway out, and the defence missing key players like Tom Stewart, Jack Henry and Lawson Humphries.
Looking at the team sheets pre-match, I feared for the Geelong defence with SDK named in the ruck it looked a little light to take on the talls of Hogan, Cadman, Riccardi and Brown. Alas, SDK did not start in the ruck as Chris Scott, not being able to make late changes anymore after a not so veiled warning from the AFL, completely disregarded his team sheet. The opening setup saw a centre bounce with Blicavs as the ruck, Jeremy Cameron in the middle, and Bailey Smith on a wing! That was certainly not on my bingo card.
This possibly led to the early jump GWS enjoyed. They dominated clearances for the first half of the first quarter, and jumped out to an early four-goal lead before some changes were made and Geelong worked their way back into the contest. The first quarter was really a case of “if you win the clearance, you score” with neither team seemingly very interested in defending.
The second quarter continued in the same vein, with Geelong getting on top more often in the clearance battle and kicking six goals to GWS’ four, to go in to the long break a point in front. With a combined score of over 120 points at the half, you can see what I mean about defence. The first half was a really interesting study in conflicting styles, with Geelong winning clearance and locking the ball in the forward half of the ground for repeat inside 50s, but when GWS were able to rebound out of 50 they went fast and wanted the corridor at every opportunity, time and again catching the Geelong tall defenders sleeping as they had crept so high up the field.
The third quarter saw GWS’ style come more to the fore and make up some ground on the margin to go in seven points infront. The last quarter was a bit of an arm wrestle early and when Jesse Hogan kicked his seventh of the day, I thought GWS had perhaps done enough to win, but you can never count this Geelong team out! Stengle replied with a goal for Geelong almost immediately, before Neale and then Stengle again both missed shots at goal – Stengle’s perhaps the most glaring miss.
A brain fade from De Koning after an aerial contest allowed Riccardi to snap a goal and with about three or four minutes to go it was game on. Geelong came hard, as you knew they would, but perhaps lacked a bit of composure (or Dangerfield heroics) in the last quarter to get them over the line and the final siren saw a relieved GWS go home with the four points, by four points!
There were a couple of keys in this game that made all the difference:
Shuffling Magnets:
Chris Scott threw some strange looks out at the beginning of this game, but not to be outdone, Kinsgley also sprung a couple of surprises. The opening bounce was interesting with Blicavs going in as the main ruck (despite SDK being named there) and Jeremy Cameron starting as a midfielder in the bounce! This also meant that Bailey Smith was pushed out of the centre bounce and started on the near wing.
For GWS, Kingsley decided to also throw his star forward in the bounce as well, with Toby Greene lining up in there, and he sent Himmelberg to a wing to play on Ollie Dempsey in some sort of tagging role. Kingsley won this early battle of the coaches. Cameron was largely ineffectual in the middle, Smith wasn’t getting his hands on the ball, while Greene was having a big influence and GWS were dominating clearances early that lead to their four-goal lead.
Chris Scott is often lauded for his tactics – moving Dangerfield forward this season has been a revelation, and Mullin going to Nick Daicos last week worked really well particularly in the last quarter. But he flat out got this wrong and it cost the Cats early. To his credit, he made the necessary changes and Geelong were able to wrestle back parity at the stoppage once they got Bailey Smith back in there where he belonged.
But I had to wonder what he was thinking with this early setup, and the fact that it took him to go four goals down to change it?
I’m sure Chris Scott knows more about footy than I will ever learn in my life, and they do say there is a fine line between genius and insanity, but this just seemed….insane. Both the Geelong forward line and the Geelong midfield lost with Cameron in there, and with Bailey Smith on a wing the Cats were robbed of his run and link up out of stoppage.
Scott also responded to the Dempsey tag in thesecond quarter by sending him to the forward line to get away from Himmelberg, and putting Cameron out to wing – this change actually worked really well as it freed up Dempsey, who was having very little impact, and allowed Cameron to swing inboard on his left coming in from the wing. It helped swing the game back in Geelong’s favour in the second quarter as Himmelberg had little influence once Cameron lined up next to him.
The only magnet Chris Scott didn’t shuffle – and the one he perhaps should have, was someone to play on Jesse Hogan!
Jesse Hogan/SDK:
Hogan was terrific for GWS today kicking 7.1 and also displaying leadership in the last quarter as he drifted down to defence to help GWS secure the win. The stats will tell you that he had nine marks – that tracks with kicking with 7.1. The stats will also tell you only two of those marks were contested – that’s right, just two! So, seven times he was able to mark the ball without little to no contest from a Geelong player.
At stages it seemed like the Geelong players did not want to go near him – “who him, ah he’s just the reigning Coleman Medallist, let’s pay him scant regard, he can’t hurt us”. It was laughable, bordering on criminal, the amount of times Hogan found himself free inside 50, and if it wasn’t Hogan, it was Cadman as time and time again the Geelong defenders found themselves getting sucked up the ground only to get caught out the back.
SDK was the main offender as he seemed to spend most of the game matched up to Hogan, and sometimes he was so far in front of him I wondered if Chris Scott had forgot to tell him he was not actually the starting ruck!
Look I get it – GWS did their homework and realized that Geelong defenders like to play aggressively high, and if the Giants can win the ball back and go quickly through the corridor, they will give their forwards opportunities if they stay goalside. The problem is this Geelong defence was missing guys like Stewart and Henry, and the defenders that were playing weren’t really influencing anything further up the field.
I counted four times in the first two quarters where SDK was caught ten or more metres infront of Hogan allowing him uncontested marks. Okay, so let’s say this was the result of specific instructions to the Giants, and a masterstroke by Kingsley in terms of coaching – if you’re Geelong you change it! I mentioned earlier there is a fine line between insanity and genius, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
If you are Sam De Koning and you are constantly getting beaten out the back by your direct opponent stop playing 15 metres infront of him! Sure SDK had 11 intercepts but he also had seven goals kicked on him! If you are Chris Scott and you can see this happening, instruct your defenders to not get sucked up to the contest when trying to lock the ball in your forward half!
It was the one magnet Chris Scott did not shuffle, the one change or tweak he did not make, and it arguably cost the game as it wasn’t just Hogan who caught Geelong out the back on more than one occasion.
Bad Kicking is football:
This is pretty obvious – I watched the Pies pay the price last week after not putting Geelong to bed over three quarters, and this time it was Geelong paying the price.
There were some bad misses particularly early in the piece (from both teams) but a scorecard of 14.17 to 16.9 tells you that Geelong had chances to win this one well before the misses in the last.
Stengle with 2.4 was the main offender.
Other stuff:
Shaun Mannagh had a great game for Geelong and is a player I really like, but I’m sure he would have liked his moments back again towards the end of that last quarter – he was just lacking a little bit of composure that could have made him the match winner not once, but twice, but that should not take away from his overall game.
Dangerfield had little impact on this contest, and spent some time on the sidelines in the second quarter – was he playing injured? I felt like the Geelong forward line struggled whenever Neale was taken out to play ruck and with Danger having not as much impact, and Cameron playing up the ground for large portions of the game, too much was left to Stengle and Mannagh.
Liked the work of Delana in the last quarter. After Finn Callaghan skewed a kick, it landed in between Delana and two Geelong players. Delana attacked the footy harder and got the handpass out to a teammate – a great sign from a young player in just his second game. Great that GWS stuck with him after a quiet outing on debut. That’s how you build a young bloke’s confidence.
I was mad when Ollie Henry left Collingwood to move closer to his Mummy – but I tell you what the version we are getting this year is making me glad to see the back of him. He can go missing for large periods of the game, and seems to shirk any sort of physical contact. He did lay a good tackle in the last quarter to be fair to him, but I don’t recall seeing him for about a quarter and a half before that.
This was probably Jake Riccardi’s best game for GWS as the second ruck. He seemed to relish the freedom in the role and at one point shoved the much bigger Neale aside with absolute disdain to create a goal for GWS.
And that will just about do me.
Despite their recent record in Geelong, I did not expect a GWS win given their recent form, but all of a sudden they are back in the 8 with as many wins as Geelong. If they can get some of their midfielders back in the coming weeks, then wins like this will be all important. They play Freo next week in Sydney and you would expect them to win that. Geelong travel to Adelaide to take on Port, and honestly that one could go either way.
Hopefully SDK is not allergic to Georgiades!
