The Geelong-Bulldogs epic in May worthy of that last Saturday in September
Thursday night had it all – including shades of the greatest home-and-away clash in history. And, like that day in 2009, this one could lead to a grand final rematch, too.
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Was there shades of 2009 at Kardinia Park on Thursday night?
Geelong and St Kilda played what is universally regarded as the best home and away game in history in Rd 14 2009 under the roof at Marvel Stadium. Both teams were undefeated going in and produced a classic which the Saints won through a Michael Gardiner goal in dying minutes.
Three months later, they clashed again in the grand final where it was the Cats who prevailed in an epic encounter by a couple of kicks.
There were plenty who left GMHBA Stadium last night after the Bailey Smith Cup between Geelong and the Western Bulldogs, stunned about what was one of the more extraordinary home and away games of recent times.
It was a September-like contest at the end of May and it wasn’t hard to imagine these two teams fighting it out again at the pointy end of the season.
Collingwood is rightly premiership favourites right now but there was something magical about what the Cats and Dogs delivered.
Maybe it was the unexpected nature of the free-flowing goal feast which no-one, in particular the two coaches, saw coming.
Thirty-six goals for the night is unheard of in the modern game where teams are obsessed with defence and structure. But when two highly skilled outfits at the peak of their powers come together, the rule book gets thrown out the window.
The yellow Sherrin pinged around the ground with both teams willing to go hard offensively at the flick of the switch, a trait Geelong loves to do at its home deck.
It’s a style of game which plays into the hands of Jeremy Cameron. He loves being one-out with his opponent with an open 50m arc in front of him when the Cats hit the accelerator in their slingshot mode.
His three-goal second quarter was poetry in motion as Geelong kicked six goals to one to open up a commanding 25-point lead. How would the Bulldogs respond?
Try four of the last five goals of the third quarter – the last two coming in the final 30 seconds – to set up a tantalising final stanza.
The thing was all of the good players were playing like good players.
Dogs playmaker Ed Richards had been tagged by Irishman Oisin Mullin but he broke out with an 11-possession quarter to resurrect his team’s fortunes.
Matthew Kennedy was kicking goals out of the middle, while Tom Liberatore and Marcus Bontempelli were doing their thing.
On the other side of the equation, Smith was again being ‘Brownlow Baz’, Tom Atkins was tough and hard, while Max Holmes was charging all over the place with his three-bounce goal-of-the-year contender in the third quarter worthy of the occasion.
When the Dogs drew level in the final quarter, the bookmakers were hovering over their premiership odds before Shannon Neale picked a very appropriate time to announce himself as a legitimate replacement for Tom Hawkins.
The big Cat kicked back-to-back goals – to make it five for the night to go alongside Cameron’s six – to push the gap out again which was ultimately a bridge too far for the Dogs who were left to rue a number of missed opportunities. They hit the post five times for the night.
It felt like the only time the crowd got a chance to take a breath was when the siren sounded.
When Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge got the opportunity to collect himself post-match, he couldn’t get his head around 127 points beating 113.
“Too much score, what did we give them, 120-odd points? We didn’t defend well,” he said about his team conceding its biggest score for the season.
“What did their key forwards kick? Eleven goals between them. We couldn’t defuse those situations, we couldn’t clear the ball from those one-on-one areas to resurrect the footy and they got too many tap-in goals from those long-range players where we needed to be better at not letting it out the back.”
Chris Scott admitted he pulled a page out of the Malcolm Blight playbook from his coaching days at Geelong where the mantra was the more goals you kick the better your chance of winning.
“I don’t think either team would have been going in thinking that a high-scoring game was what they were after necessarily but it just became clear you weren’t going to keep the other team to a really low score in the second half,” Scott said.
“I shouldn’t speak to them but our thinking was we need to stay proactive and keep looking to score rather than shut the game down because my guess is if you try to do that for too long against them they find a way.
“The modern game is such that if you do try and shut it down too much you can get stuck in your back half, the pressure builds and while that can work against lower quality opposition, if you give them too many chances with repeat stoppages they’re clearly the best forward 50 stoppage team in the comp.
“I’m not sure that we were right but our philosophy was we needed to put pressure on them the other way.”
He was full of praise for Smith – despite being puzzled by his post-match revelation that he’d required pain-killing injections in his shin throughout – who finished with an equal game-high 33 possessions, six clearances, seven tackles and 810m gained.
“I thought he was outstanding. I really admire those guys, I’m not sure there are that many who genuinely want and crave that kind of attention, that pressure to perform in spite of all that attention but he’s certainly one of them,” Scott said.
The stats sheet hurt the Dogs given they clearly did a lot right to get back into the game. They finished ahead in many of the key metrics; +5 inside 50s, +45 handballs, +9 clearances, +10 centre clearances, +13 contested possessions and +5 contested marks.
There was one statistic where they didn’t fare as well which had Dogs fans emotional, a 26-12 free-kick count in favour of the home team.
Beveridge took the high ground about a controversial out-of-bounds decision late in the game saying “swings and roundabouts happen”.
“No-one is sitting in our rooms thinking about the free-kick differential, no-one is talking about it. It just happens here and there,” he said.
The Dogs coach then strangely veered off midway through his answer, bringing up soccer’s technology-aided officiating system and then acknowledging Ange Postecoglou’s effort in winning the Europa League Cup with Tottenham.
“What do they have, the VAR in the EPL?,” Beveridge said. “Well done to Ange for winning the Europa, what an amazing coach. Sorry, that’s a diversion.”
It was that sort of night at Kardinia Park, strange unexpected things happened like the best home and away game for years.
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