CAT INSTINCTS KEPT IN CHECK
FORMER St Kilda coach Grant Thomas believes Geelong players are over-coached to the point that they lose the instincts needed to handle the heat of finals football.
The Cats this week signalled the need to examine their game style after producing another poor finals performance, again highlighted by a limp first-quarter effort.
Geelong has been outscored by 113 points in first quarters in its past four losing finals — 20 goals to one — with a lack of pressure a recurring factor.
“Quite simply, in my mind, Geelong, Chris Scott, the coaching team, set the team up like it’s a game of chess,” Thomas said. “They get so inundated and focused on strategy and tactics and how they need to move the ball and all the rest of it.
“They have an elite core of players, similar to Richmond, an elite core, and they don’t utilise their skills. They don’t allow them to play on instinct.
“They actually have them so structured and so organised that they’re not able to play the way finals football is won. And because of that, they get themselves tied up in knots.”
In a wide-ranging discussion on the Sam, Mike & Thomo podcast, champion Geelong ruckman Sam Newman said “you could set your clock by the fact that Geelong would turn up missing” on Friday night against Melbourne in the knockout final.
“235 points they won by in their last two games, they kicked goals out of their behinds ... they swaggered onto there like millionaires and what happened?” said Newman, who said he was watching the NRL on Friday night and only saw the Cats game on replay.
“The great experiment of getting Gazza down from Queensland and us all just coming up in the bus and giggling and laughing … you could see it happening.
“And they were a disgrace and I’m sorry to say that. I’ve been accused of being a disgrace when I’ve played bad games and I’m just turning it back.”
Newman said players had to take responsibility for the performance, adding there was only so much Scott could do to get his players motivated.
“Just from looking at it, I wasn’t there … they stuffed around with over-handpassing, over-possessing the ball and didn’t get it down (to the forward line), that old ploy again,” Newman said.
“They didn’t get it down to the people who might win the game for them.”