Geelong greats don’t expect grand final history to weigh on current-day Cats
Just like this year, Geelong entered a grand final 30 years ago having lost a tight decider only recently. Players from then weigh in on whether defeat will impact the current-day Cats.
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Even three decades on, “it really does eat at you”.
This time 30 years ago, Geelong was preparing for a grand final.
Like this year’s Cats side, Geelong had lived through a heartbreaking decider only recently, – in 1989 – and had got back to the big dance.
Hoping to break a 29-year drought in 1992, Geelong started brightly but West Coast goals just before halftime zapped the Cats’ energy.
To this day, some Cats players struggle to understand why Mark Bairstow was sent to Peter Matera, as the Eagles wingman booted 5.3 in one of the great grand final performances to take the cup out of Victoria for the first time.
The 1992 decider was the final game of Neville Bruns’ 226-match career and it still haunts him so much that he hasn’t watched either that defeat or the 1989 classic grand final back.
“It definitely still lives with you. I have no doubt that some guys would have some almost PTSD sort of stuff, it really does eat at you,” he said.
“They were great days but they are very sad days when you lose them and you can’t ever get them back.”
Defender Tim Darcy also played in the 1989 and 1992 losses.
Even now he sometimes get caught thinking about what he missed out on.
“Absolutely it matters, only a chosen few get the opportunity to play in grand finals,” he said.
“As much as I only played in two, a number of my teammates played in three or four. Absolutely you reflect back on it and think about what could have been. But you can’t do much about it.”
Halfway between that 1992 loss and now, Geelong players lived with the burden of the near-misses from the earlier generation but managed to break through and win the 2007 premiership.
Saluting again in 2009 and 2011, Geelong’s past players believe the club has smashed that stigma of being close but not close enough.
While Bruns said the 2020 grand final loss will stick with some of the players when they run out against Sydney this Saturday, he is sure the club will not head back down the path of being perennial runners-up.
He urged those without a premiership medal to do all they could to grab one.
“What you try to do is not put those negative thoughts in your head and think positively,” Bruns said.
“I hope those boys who missed out in 2020 learn from it in the right way and say ‘I am going to do everything I possibly can to make sure I win this one’.
“I think they will be using it as a spur, I know how they would have been feeling (after 2020). I think you have to turn that around to be positive and go in there feeling confident.”
Like the Cats of Darcy’s era, the current-day Geelong side has had so many near-misses within a decade.
But Darcy was adamant the past doesn’t have any bearing on this generation of Cats.
“They are totally irrelevant, completely irrelevant,” he said.
“If you try and look at the footy club in isolation over the pat two decades, the record vindicates that they have played in five grand finals and won three.
“You’re talking about completely different players, a completely different group and a different time in regards to how the game is played. What happened historically is going to have no relevance on how the game will be played on Saturday.”
The 1992 season was Tim McGrath’s first since crossing to Geelong from North Melbourne and he would go on to lose deciders in 1994 and 1995.
But those losses don’t sit as heavily with the defender as with some teammates.
“I’ve hard a lot of former Geelong players talk about how their careers have an asterisk because they didn’t play in a premiership but now I think they are changing their tune a bit,’ he said.
“Looking back, it would have been great to play in a premiership but I don’t lay awake at night thinking about it.”
The golden era of three flags from 2007-11 washed away much of the pain felt for those teams McGrath played in.
“What that did then is take the monkey off our back and we could move forward,” he said.
“All you tend to hear now is people talking about those premierships.
“I think they have probably moves past (the grand final losses) and look at it a bit more respectfully than they used to just because we lost four in that era.”
Even if the near-misses from 1989-95 were long ago shrugged off, Jed Bews will carry a personal connection to that era onto the field on Saturday.
The reliable defender was born in 1993, and his father Andrew played just one grand final in his Geelong career, in 1989.
The elder Bews battled it out with Bruns in the week of the 1992 grand final, with Bews nursing a sore shoulder and Bruns a wobbly knee, as coach Malcolm Blight rolled the ball out to the pair in a physical test.
“I had a crook knee and he had a crook shoulder and I ended up falling on top of him,” Bruns recalled.
“ (Bews) said ‘watch my shoulder’. We were good mates and I said ‘watch my knee’ and in one of those tussles, I ended up falling on top of him and it didn’t help.”
Bews failed the test, missed selection and was playing in Brisbane during the 1994-95 Geelong losses.
All these years on, Jed Bews wants to win one for his father and the teammates of that era.
“I definitely would love to win one especially for my old man and my family,” he said.
“That is why we play the game and unfortunately my old man wasn’t quite able to get there and I haven’t so far either. To bring a premiership into the family would be lovely. I am sure my old man would be just as happy for me if we do get the job done.”
Both Darcy and Bruns will be in the stands at the MCG on Saturday, cheering as loud as any other Cats fan.
Bruns went to the three successful grand finals earlier this century and he believes that his side will win it again if they just play to their potential.
If the Cats beat the Swans, he will be as proud as any at the ground.
“It’s sheer exhilaration and relief for the guys,” he said.
“I know what it’s like to not win one and I know what it’s like to be in the background and enjoy it where you can.
“Those guys who played with Geelong and still love Geelong will just want them to win. You do get a kick out of it and I am looking forward to having a very happy few days after it.”
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