HURT CATS FIGHT BACK
Geelong overcomes early injuries & shaky start to power past Lions at SCG
SO often the line coming from inside the Geelong camp is that if the Cats play their best, they can defeat the best.
The third quarter of last night’s thumping 27-point win over premiership fancies Brisbane Lions showed that belief in a nutshell.
When Geelong plays as it did in the penultimate term at the SCG — dominating out of the centre, forcing the ball forward through Tom Hawkins and locking the opposition inside their back half — it seems irresistible.
As with most of his 100 games in the hoops, Patrick Dangerfield started in the middle, and was back to his absolute best around the stoppages.
Dangerfield finished with 26 disposals, eight clearances and seven inside-50s. But even those gaudy numbers do not show his influence on the match when it was up for grabs after halftime.
He started the wave of dominance with a clearance win that found Gary Rohan in space in front of goal.
Mark Blicavs set up Gary Ablett for the next major with a gut-busting run from the fullback line to find Ablett at halfforward and the Cats were away.
Dangerfield was ably supported again by Sam Menegola — who has gone to a new level in fatherhood — Cam Guthrie, Joel Selwood and Brandan Parfitt in the midfield.
After Dayne Zorko and Lachie Neale had Brisbane on top at the main break, they — and their teammates — were swarmed by blue and white guernseys.
Football can so often be dressed up with statistics and theories, but in the premiership quarter the Cats hunted the ball and the man harder than the Lions did.
The collective group in the middle of the ground stepped up when prime movers Quinton Narkle and Mitch Duncan went down early in the first term with hamstring injuries.
Winners were easy to find after halftime, with Blicavs controlling the backline and Rohan showing off his physicality up forward.
Darcy Fort has improved with every game as the No.1 ruckman and Sam Simpson did not look like a man who had not been seen at the top level for two years. He worked into the right spots to collect a game-high 27 touches.
Two late goals in the second term to Menegola and Hawkins off Ablett assists kept the supposed home side in the game after Brisbane put the foot down in the second term.
Those majors started a run of nine in a row, which included 7.3 to 0.1 in a thirdterm run Lions coach Chris Fagan later described as “astonishing”.
As those inside the club say, when Geelong plays like that, not many teams can stop it.