Saints’ last Geelong win an epic revival
TIM Watson didn’t have too many highlights in his twoyear stint as St Kilda coach but this one would have ranked right up there.
He remains the last man to coach a winning St Kilda side in Geelong after his Saints ran amok in a dramatic final quarter to come from behind and win by 10 points back in Round 10, 1999.
It was typical of Geelong of the time.
The Cats had streaked 25 points clear early in the final quarter with a howling breeze in their back before allowing the Saints to slam on six unanswered goals.
Watson had masterminded the win at three-quarter time by urging his players to run the footy into the wind.
And run his players did, exposing Geelong’s vulnerabilities during a horror run of losses for the Cats that would eventually stretch to nine in a row.
St Kilda’s big guns all fired in the last quarter — Barry Hall gave the Cats’ defence the run around, Andrew Thompson clocked possessions at will and Robert Harvey turned on an inspired final quarter under duress.
Just before halftime, Harvey had been shouldercharged by Garry Hocking and hobbled breathlessly off the park, helped by trainers.
“He came in at halftime and I have to say he looked like death warmed up,” Watson said of Harvey after the 18.10 (118) to 16.12 (108) win.
“Hocking really shook him up and I know that he was hurting.”
When the unheralded Ben Walton kicked the sealer for St Kilda in the fading light, Cats fans were already streaming out of the ground, grumbling about another home loss.
It was indicative of Geelong’s rollercoaster season, where the Cats won their first five games in stunning style but then invented new ways to lose matches week after week.
“From a positive point of view we got back to playing the kind of football we played in the first five games,” then Geelong coach Gary Ayres said after the match.
“Their big guns at the end of the day just got us.”
Lenny Hayes was the last player remaining from that day, retiring in 2014.
He was just 19 and playing only his sixth match of footy in a side featuring names like Nathan Burke, Austinn Jones, Peter Everitt, Stewart Loewe and Gavin Mitchell.
Some of the forgotten names running around for the Cats included Scott Bamford, Tristan Lynch and Simon Arnott.
Geelong and St Kilda have played at Kardinia Park eight times since, but only three times since the epic battle between two rising giants in 2004 when the Cats hung on to win by seven points.
The bulk of this article originally appeared in the Geelong Advertiser on June 14, 2014.
GEELONG v ST KILDA 1991 ELIMINATION FINAL
IF somebody had told Geelong coach Malcolm Blight before the 1991 elimination final against St Kilda that his best player Gary Ablett was going to be held goalless and Tony Lockett was going to kick nine goals, but his team was still going to win, they would have been sent away for a thorough psychological assessment.
But that is exactly what unfolded at Waverley Park 28 years ago.
The Cats and the Saints had respectively finished in third and fourth spots on the ladder that year, but such was the absurdity of the AFL’s new finals system, they were squared off in a do-or-die battle in week one of September.
St Kilda captain Danny Frawley went to Ablett and played one of his greatest games, but in shutting him out, the Saints allowed Billy Brownless to get off the chain.
Brownless kicked eight goals while Lockett dominated at the other end of the ground as the two spearheads produced a modern day shootout for the ages.
“Plugger was on fire, and we had a few blokes on him, too,” Brownless recalled.
“Barry Stoneham used to play at centre half-forward and in the ruck, he played everywhere for us, and I reckon Baz kept him to one goal in a half, which is a bloody good effort.
“But I had a nice day and the good thing for me was Frawley went to Ablett and was doing a good job on him, so they didn’t move Frawley to me until the last quarter.
“I was on their second or third defender, Paul Harding, and had a good game and kicked a few. It was a good shootout, Plugger was on fire and I was going OK at the other end.
“Unfortunately it was third versus fourth and whoever lost went out, so it was a bad set up for finals.”
Robert Harvey starred for St Kilda, registering 29 disposals, and Nicky Winmar had 27, while for Geelong, Mark Bairstow (25 possessions) and Garry Hocking (24 possessions and two goals) were prolific in the middle of the ground.
Brownless would go on to top his eight-goal heroics the next year with a bag of nine against Footscray in the 1992 qualifying final, but the week after the win against the Saints he suffered a double hamstring blow that ruled him out of the preliminary final against West Coast.
Ablett was also absent for that game, having been suspended for an incident in the win over St Kilda.
“Ablett had a quiet game but I reckon he ran into two blokes and knocked them out,” Brownless said.
“Nathan Burke was one and David Grant was the other one. So he didn’t have a great game kicking goals but he got rid of two of their players.
“But we played Hawthorn the week after and I did both hamstrings, so I didn’t play West Coast in the preliminary final and I don’t think I would have played (in the Grand Final) if we won, I reckon I was done.”
St Kilda was booted from the finals despite its bravery to play two men down, while Geelong subsequently lost its next two finals against the Hawks and Eagles.
THIS was the year both clubs began to emerge as contenders to the established forces of Brisbane and Port Adelaide. Geelong and St Kilda would lose their respective preliminary finals to those teams, but in Round 18 they faced off in a battle to determine who was the stronger of the young bulls on the rise. It took until the last quarter to get an answer, and even then, despite Geelong’s seven-point win, an argument could have been made that the Saints had their noses slightly in front. They had won the pre-season grand final earlier in the year and then defeated the Cats by 61 points in Round 1, and with the right mix of youth and ex