Talk not enough for average Cats
THESE are the indisputables.
Geelong has two wins from its past nine finals.
Its record at the MCG is average at best.
It continually fails to show up or set the tone in the first quarter, especially in finals.
The gap between its best and worst is huge. That inconsistency multiplies come finals.
And if things don’t change, the Cats will make a straight sets exit from finals against Sydney on Friday night.
These facts haven’t popped up overnight.
They’ve plagued the Cats since they won the premiership in 2011.
It’s not like Geelong’s finals record is ugly because it has just scraped into the finals before bombing out.
This season it has a homeand-away win-loss record of 68.18 per cent — after 77.27 per cent in both 2016 and 2014, 81.81 per cent in 2013 and 68.18 per cent in 2012.
In that time, Geelong has a finals win-loss percentage of 22.22.
The Cats have an MCGsized ground at their Waurn Ponds training base, allowing them to work on how to play that ground whenever it wants.
It leaves you scratching your head as to how their finals efforts can continually go so horribly wrong.
“It is a different ground and it is a different way we have to play,” Scott Selwood said on SEN. “We did have to alter stuff, but we thought we had the right structures and systems in place to do that and unfortunately we just couldn’t get it done.
“The width of the ground usually gets different teams. It’s a different sort of look.
“There’s bigger areas you need to protect in team defence and a lot more space in between contests when the ball was outside your area.
“You’re constantly looking at trying to squeeze the ground and trying to make it as short as possible.
“Richmond played it a lot better and knew it a lot better than we did.”
Externally, we can only judge what Geelong does internally by what those at the club say.
When asked last week what the Cats had learnt from last year’s preliminary final loss to Sydney, Patrick Dangerfield said: “Don’t get seven goals kicked on you in the first quarter, it’s pretty simple”.
Asked earlier this year how the Cats could overcome their issue of slow starts, captain Joel Selwood responded that they needed to start better.
After finals losses, the line of thoroughly reviewing the game and making sure the players get it right next time is used.
Those kinds of responses are fine when fans can see improvement.
But they are infuriating when those issues continually pop up.
A quick look at today’s letters to the editor (page 17) gives you a decent idea of the current feeling within the Cats’ fan base.
The skipper said on Saturday that Geelong was one good win away from going on a Western Bulldogs-style run through the finals.
It gets the chance at redemption for last season’s preliminary final capitulation on Friday night.
Sydney is a team Geelong has never beaten in a final, a team that has systematically dismantled the Cats five times out of their past six encounters. Selwood is right. Anything is possible if the Cats can find a way to knock out the Swans.
There is no better time for Geelong to put all of its talk about “getting it right” into action.
Otherwise the Cats will look back on 2017 as another year that could have been.