Tinker time: Cats greats
GEELONG champions Jimmy Bartel and Harry Taylor believe the Cats’ game plan needs a shake-up to stop the side being a finals punching bag.
Geelong’s 83-point evisceration by Melbourne on Friday night came after a 43-point loss to Port Adelaide two weeks prior, following a pattern since 2016 of heavy defeats in finals.
On both occasions, Geelong set a new season-low for scoring, kicking a paltry 11 goals combined in the two losses. In their 10 finals losses over the past six seasons, seven have been by at least 29 points and the Cats hold an average losing margin of 38 points.
Triple-premiership legend Bartel, who is now the Greater Western Sydney football director, said the Cats’ cautious game style was well suited to get them to the finals but didn’t stack up under September heat.
While Bartel only suggested the club needed to “tinker” with its style, “the big question” would be whether this finals series was an aberration and can be easily fixed or a more permanent issue.
“They can go and play the exact same way and they will be back in the finals (next year),” Bartel told RSN.
“It all depends on how you want to measure success and I don’t know how the board and the football department and the coaching staff and everyone there measures success (but) they will make finals if they go and play the exact same way.
“You go back to 2016 and if you are wanting to win finals by kicking 40 points, you are going to hope it is raining a lot.”
Taylor, who was speaking during the AFL premiership cup tour in Western Australia, said Geelong likely wouldn’t have the chance to make drastic list changes given its older brigade was largely contracted, so the only way changes would come was through game style.
“I do think they need to go and have a look at the game plan potentially and tinker with a few things,” the twotime premiership defender said.
“It is one of those cases potentially where you can’t go and change your list too much. They (Geelong) don’t have the capabilities to do that and it won’t necessarily help them immediately next year.
“It is important to just maybe try a few different things with the game plan over the pre-season and the offseason and front up and have another crack.”
Younger players such as Jordan Clark and Quinton Narkle were frozen out of the side at times this year and Bartel said the club needed to blend the young and old more.