GEELONG’S GRAND PLANS NEED RETHINK
AT the start of the 2021 season, Geelong president Craig Drummond sat down for an interview with the Geelong Advertiser.
Among a wide range of issues that was discussed was how the club measured success.
Drummond, a highly regarded businessman and administrator, pointed out quite plainly that while the board and executive’s role was to provide as much opportunity for the Cats to be in with a shot at the end of the year, the ultimate measure of success was winning the grand final.
“To be very clear, the objective of the club is to win premierships,” Drummond said. “That is in our business plan … so that is what we are aiming for, that is what the ultimate success is, and Chris
Scott and his team are very clear on what success looks like.
“What we have got to do as an organisation is give ourselves the best opportunity to be there at the pointy end of the season and I would say we have been successful as a club in giving our football program the best opportunity with the resourcing to be there each year, year in, year out, but ultimately, let’s make no mistake, we want to win premierships.”
It is impossible not to admire the determination that Geelong has shown in fighting the AFL system for the better part of the past two decades.
While every club has had its turn towards the bottom part of the ladder, the lowest the Cats have finished since 2004 is 10th.
In that time they have made the finals 16 out of 18 years, played off in 12 preliminary finals, reached five grand finals and have won three premierships.
It is an amazing feat, and Geelong has used the necessary tools available to it to stay in contention for as long as it could without “bottoming out”, but if the plan through all of this has been to win a premiership, rather than be a chance to win one, then for the past 10 years it has not worked.
As harsh as it sounds, in the past decade the Cats have little to show for their aforementioned record, and part of the problem they have faced is that while they have rebuilt on the run by topping up with experienced players from rival clubs in order to stay in contention, opposition sides, for fleeting periods or otherwise, have gone past them.
Since 2011, Sydney, Hawthorn, the Western Bulldogs, Richmond and
West Coast have all won flags, and in two weeks Melbourne could join the list – that is a third of the competition in 10 years.
Remarkably, all of those sides have missed the finals since their premierships, but they took their opportunities when presented with them, which the Cats have not been able to do.
The other issue Geelong
has created by topping up is that it has meant younger players on its list have been deprived of opportunities they might otherwise have had.
There is no question the Cats had every right to chase Jeremy Cameron at the end of last year because a fully fit Cameron could have been the final touch on a side that just missed a premiership in 2020.
So, too, Isaac Smith, and, while it doesn’t appear to have worked the way they would have liked, Shaun Higgins.
But 12 months on this team looks very different.
Geelong has always done list management differently but perhaps the time has come to concede that it has now run its race in terms of winning a flag because when taking a quick glance at the list of players from the preliminary final side who will be either 30 or older at the start of next season it is hard to see where the improvement will come from.
Higgins, Joel Selwood, Tom Hawkins, Smith, Zach Tuohy, Lachie Henderson, Patrick Dangerfield, Rhys Stanley, Mark Blicavs, Gary Rohan, Mitch Duncan and Sam Menegola made up half of the side on Friday night, and while some of that group will stay at the level they were at this year, others will invariably slip away, which was evident late in the season.
Yes, Jack Henry will get even better in 2022, as will Esava Ratugolea, and Brad Close impressed for most of the year, but in the meantime, players such as Charlie Constable, Quinton Narkle, Nathan Kreuger and Jordan Clark have not had enough opportunities for exposure at the top level and are now all potential candidates to walk out the door.
Since 2004 the highest draft pick Geelong has had is seven, during which time every other club has had at least one top five selection, and the two grand finalists this year will be led by top picks Marcus Bontempelli (four), Jackson Macrae (six), Bailey Smith (seven) and Aaron Naughton (nine) for the Bulldogs, and Christian Petracca (two), Clayton Oliver (four), Angus Brayshaw (three), Christian Salem (nine) and Luke Jackson (three) for the Demons.
Having tried and tried again to beat the system, now must surely be time to – at the very least – reconsider the approach that has seen Geelong come so close only to fall short each time.
Bringing in outside talent when you are a genuine contender is the right thing to do – just like Melbourne (Ben Brown) and the Bulldogs (Adam Treloar) did – but the Cats need to accept that they have taken their best shot with their core group of experienced senior players for six years now and missed.
Off the back of what we have seen in the past six weeks, they should not be topping up again at the expense of going to the draft.
Instead, it is time for Geelong to do what it did before 2004 and develop and select players who will form the nucleus of its next premiership team.
It worked then and, as has been proven by other clubs since, it can work now.