Key Cats open up about how the club bounced back from its embarrassing finals exit last season
Even when the Cats were 11-1 fans wrote letters to the club asking for Chris Scott to be sacked. Tonight is his chance to show the footy world why the 2019 version is a very different Geelong.
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There’s not much Brian Cook hasn’t seen in football.
The most experienced and successful CEO in the game has ridden the rollercoaster ride of the AFL at two clubs.
On Friday night he will preside over his 10th preliminary final out of the past 16 which is an incredible record in anyone’s language.
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There have been many forks in the road at Geelong but probably the most famous was his club review at the end of 2006 which ultimately decided to keep coach Mark Thompson.
It was an inspired piece of administrating with Cook’s findings kickstarting a golden era for the Cats with three premierships, including a record Grand Final-winning margin in 2007.
One key aspect which Cook took away from the exhaustive process and gave him the most confidence was that he found a club, and in particular a playing group, who were ready for change.
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Twelve months ago after Melbourne wiped Geelong out of the first week of the finals, Cook gave a brutally honest assessment on SEN radio the next morning.
Everything was on the table according to the CEO, the game style, the coaches’ roles, the list build strategy.
The annual post-season review was then undertaken and lots of questions asked. While it wasn’t anywhere near the 2006 scale, there was an edge to it.
And Cook was pleasantly surprised to get a sense of deja vu.
“First of all there was a really disgruntled group of players, forget about the disgruntled fans for the minute, there was a really disgruntled group of players who were not happy with their performance,” he says.
“When you get that, that element, that state in your footy club, in your footy department, it means that they are in a state of readiness for change.
“You don’t have to force it upon them. They sort of create it themselves and they just have to be led a bit.”
Cook watched with interest as the GPS numbers started to come in as pre-season progressed. Records were being broken, the training was at a different level. Things were happening.
Communication had been an issue, now everyone seemed to be on the same page.
There had been some obvious changes in personnel in the off-season which signalled the desire to play a more pressure-based game.
The statistic which haunted Cook after the Melbourne debacle was that Geelong had just one tackle inside its forward 50 in the first half of the elimination final.
Western Bulldogs tackling machine Luke Dahlhaus was brought in along with Sydney’s Gary Rohan.
VFL captain Tom Atkins was promoted and Gryan Miers, who’d played all of 2018 in the reserves, also ticked the pressure forward box.
Then there was AFL great Gary Ablett whose first year back at Kardinia Park hadn’t really clicked.
He was to be reprogrammed as a permanent small forward with a new thirst for tackling.
It was all good in theory but Geelong’s draw loomed large as a potential major pothole.
The first six weeks saw them playing Collingwood, Melbourne, Adelaide, GWS, Hawthorn and West Coast.
There were some at the club who thought a 3-3 split would be a great result while there were others who could see a 0-6 nightmare.
But on the opening Friday night of the season in front of 78,000 at the MCG, Geelong’s new pressure game shone and they took down the Magpies who were everyone’s flag favourite after making the Grand Final the previous year.
From there the Cats got rolling.
The first six weeks went 5-1 and when the mid-season bye arrived Geelong were well clear on top of the ladder with an 11-1 record.
It had been a stunning turnaround, one Cook calls the “whiplash effect”.
“The football people carried out their own review and came up with several changes, from that there was what I call the whiplash effect,” Cook said.
“It’s where you move your wrist a little bit and you get this large outcome from the whip.
“Was it lucky? Maybe it was a bit lucky that Dahlhaus played so well and Rohan.
“But by and large the annual review took place last year, created a few minor changes and they’ve worked.”
Football boss Simon Lloyd can chart back what everyone is seeing in 2019 to the end of 2015.
“It’s not a one season thing, it’s something that has happened over a number of seasons,” he says.
“There are only 11 of the 2015 list that remain in 2019 which is a big statistic and speaks a lot in regards to how we have transitioned the list.
“What has probably happened for the past two or three years, a lot of supporters, members, people have looked at four or five star names at the Geelong Football Club and that’s all they’ve seen.
“What we see is a huge group of young players who have been given an opportunity and risen to the challenge. And that has come through some excellent recruiting and shrewd trading as well.”
Lloyd rattles off names such as Esava Ratugolea, Jack Henry, Tom Stewart, Mark O’Connor, Quinton Narkle and Tim Kelly as examples of players who came through non-traditional avenues or were essentially overlooked by others.
All of this was done while maintaining the club’s ethos of always being a contender.
The challenges of rejuvenating a list and remaining a premiership threat has been too hard for many of Geelong’s once great rivals.
St Kilda hasn’t played finals since 2011, Fremantle has gone four years without September action and even Hawthorn has only played in two of the past four finals series and gone out in straight sets in both.
“As a football club we operate under the premise that we’re always looking at being in contention while having the challenge of reshaping our list,” Lloyd states.
Midfielder Cam Guthrie says the team has a completely different feel to one which exited embarrassingly last year.
“I think we kind of scrapped in last year and probably weren’t playing our best footy,” he said.
“A few of our newer younger players were still feeling out their roles and really hadn’t played much footy at all.
“We have evolved a bit and I think a lot of people are really keen to compare our team to past finals. I think if you looked at the personnel, you would find that it’s a lot different.”
And Father Time is also playing a role in this year’s finals campaign.
Guthrie plays his 161st game on Friday night, he turned 27 last month and has been through two losing preliminary finals. He knows the time is now.
“It’s on my mind every day at the moment,” he says.
“We are seriously trying to maximise the opportunity we are in.”
Strangely for most Cats fans, the preliminary final is about Chris Scott.
The love/hate relationship he has with the club’s supporters baffles the hierarchy but they point out that the 2011 premiership coach takes a lot of hits to protect others.
When the players don’t deliver as has been the case in recent finals campaigns, Scott steps up and takes the bullets.
Even when the Cats were 11-1 this year the letters calling for the coach to be sacked still arrived at GMHBA Stadium.
His move to leave Rhys Stanley out of the qualifying final against Collingwood and play fullback Mark Blicavs in the ruck sent the faithful into meltdown.
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”There has been a loud minority I think where the impression is that when we win it’s the players’ doing,” Cook explains.
“And when we lose it’s the coach’s doing.
“The most accountable person in this footy club is the senior coach.
“The one thing I have learnt in my 20 years here is the more accountability people have the more support they need. It’s not the other way around.”
Another thing Brian Cook has learnt … how to win premierships after summers of discontent.
Originally published as Key Cats open up about how the club bounced back from its embarrassing finals exit last season