CLEAR VIEW FROM THE TOP
IT does not take long for people to find fault in the way a team is playing once results start to go against it.
Geelong had won all bar one of its matches before the bye and was seemingly in cruise control at the top of the ladder before the mid-season break.
The Cats’ recent record in matches immediately after the bye has been well documented, but how do you assess their form in the past two weeks?
A fighting win against Adelaide — at home — and a disappointing loss to the Western Bulldogs is hardly enough evidence to build a case, and the fact is a victory tomorrow against St Kilda would hardly convince the doubters Geelong had turned its season around again.
A loss would rightly raise eyebrows given where the teams are at, but securing four points and, more importantly, getting back to playing the type of footy that saw his team enter the break with an 11-1 record will be Chris Scott’s focus this week.
The style the Cats displayed in the first half of the season is what earned them such a desirable record, and in a season as even as this, those early wins are already proving invaluable.
One only needs consider this week’s fixture and the assorted ramifications for the chasing pack to gain an appreciation of how tight things are becoming at the top.
Tonight West Coast hosts Collingwood, and while Geelong has copped heat in recent weeks, it is nothing compared with what the Magpies have received.
Should Nathan Buckley’s men fail in the west it will put them at risk of falling outside the top four, which would have seemed unthinkable a month ago.
Essendon did sneak into the eight after an unflattering start to the year — there were even calls for coach John Worsfold to go in some quarters — but a loss to a rapidly improving North Melbourne put them back out of the eight and have them chasing their tail.
The Roos could remarkably be in the eight by the end of the round, less than seven weeks on from parting ways with Brad Scott, as could Fremantle, which has been smashed in the West Australian press a month after a declaration from expert commentator Jonathan Brown that the Dockers were closer to winning this year’s flag than the Eagles.
Richmond has fought its way to fifth after a horror run with injuries and will regain key players in the weeks ahead, and its clash with GWS shapes as crucial to the Giants, who have lost three of their past four and find themselves outside the top four.
To round the weekend out, Port Adelaide — hailed for its victory over Geelong, smashed for its loss to the Bulldogs and then applauded once more for its win against the Crows — takes on a rampaging Brisbane Lions outfit that nobody could have imagined at the start of the year would be in the top four after 16 rounds.
But as one of the competition’s in-form teams, it is crucial for the Lions to make the most of their momentum and win as many games as they can while they are running hot.
That is what Geelong did so well, and while Scott and his men have some work ahead to get back to where they were, it is not as though the Cats have dropped off anywhere near as dramatically as some others.
They also remain in top place, four points and percentage clear of second.
To suggest Geelong peaked too early would be to say it would have been better losing a few games and then changing gears now so that it would be in form right before finals.
But football does not work that way, and like a game of cricket, runs on the board are priceless.
Invariably a handful of teams leave their run late each year, but the Cats have banked their points and as the teams below them would concede, that is a far more attractive place to be than chasing wins and relying on other results.