Cup is within Cats’ reach
Now they must grab it
FOOTBALL doesn’t owe you anything.
As Dennis Cometti famously called as Mick Martin knelt distraught in the goalsquare and Gary Ablett Sr lined up to win the 1994 preliminary final: “There is not justice in football”.
If there was, the football gods would be shining on the Cats.
No team in the modern era outside of Ross Lyon’s St Kilda has come so close as Geelong in a three-year period and not won a premiership.
In 2019 and 2020, Chris Scott’s team was in reach of glory and just couldn’t grab it.
When I asked Scott about the pain of coming so close before the season, he chose not to properly look back on how it felt.
“It is one of the hardest parts of professional sport, the what-ifs and sliding doors,” he said in March.
“I think back on it and try and take the lessons out of it. I don’t think back on it and punish myself.
“It just doesn’t help to go back, you have got to focus on what the lessons are that you can get out of it.”
One lesson of that oh-soclose 2020 decider is that you have to win a premiership, it doesn’t just come to you.
In 2020, Geelong got itself to the edge of winning but Dustin Martin stepped in and took it for himself and Richmond.
Geelong could look back on the past few years and think it deserves a premiership, but it won’t get one on Saturday without taking it.
Patrick Dangerfield may look at his glittering CV and see one thing missing, Jeremy Cameron may justify his move south and Joel Selwood may be ready to walk off into the sunset as a premiership captain.
But against a Sydney side that will always give its full effort, the Cats will have to take the silverware. This is a grand final where Geelong should be favourite, yet the two teams are close together.
Through Cameron and Tom Hawkins, the Cats have a better forward line than the Swans’ defence.
A hobbled Sam Reid eases some concerns and Geelong’s defensive unit is well built to clamp Sydney’s forwards.
The midfield on paper is neck-and-neck but Geelong is tougher and in better form.
No game is won on paper though, especially not a grand final.
Instead, grand final day shapes a legacy.
Who cares that Stuart Dew only kicked seven goals in 15 games in the 2008 season if two of those crushed Geelong in the third quarter of that grand final?
Who remembers Max Rooke played just one miserable game after he etched himself as a beloved Cat thanks to a typically tough performance in the 2009 nailbiter?
So many of Luke Beveridge’s 2016 Western Bulldogs heroes never scaled the heights again – Shane Biggs, Tom Boyd, Fletcher Roberts and Joel Hamling faded into football folklore.
No complete premiership side has ever taken the field together again, because grand finals are a moment frozen in time, to be rewatched and remembered, but never relived.
Cats fans will flock to the MCG, or to a mate’s house, or to a live site, on Saturday with hope and belief in their hearts that this is to be a day they will want to remember forever.
The same goes for the players, who know if they play well they can be heroes.
Geelong has been the best side of the season and is the better of the two sides going into the biggest game of the year.
That doesn’t mean much when the ball is bounced though – the Cats will have to reach out and grab the cup this time.
The cup is within reach and it’s time for the Cats to claim it.