Fighting dreaded asterisk
CHRIS Scott’s Geelong is under the pump once more and the “losing in straight sets” expression — one that reeks of inability to handle the finals heat — has reared its ugly head again.
But before the footy masses feel a need to join the pile on, AFL Legend Malcolm Blight advises them to grab a calculator first.
Next, he says, punch in “one divided by 18”. The answer: 0.0555555. Or less than six per cent.
That’s how hard it is, says the former Geelong and Adelaide coach, to win an AFL premiership in any given year.
“If you were starting a business now and you only have a six per cent chance of success, would you start the bloody thing?” Blight says down the line from Adelaide.
“The trick is you have just got to keep fronting up, you have got to keep appearing. As funny as it sounds, it takes courage to keep appearing.
“If you look at the volume of work with Chris Scott and Geelong, he has done an enormous job to stay relevant for as long as he’s been there.
“You just have to keep dusting yourself back off.
“Going out in straight sets, I was never part of it as a player or coach. I don’t know what I would do.
“And I guess in all fairness if it happens, people are going to ask the question.”
And therein lies the rub. For all of Scott’s achievements, which include a premiership and footy’s greatest home-and-away record, there is still an asterisk for those who believe the Cats have underachieved.
As the Cats trudged off Adelaide Oval last week — with Cam Guthrie and Joel Selwood among the modest contributors — it was obvious where the heat was going to be focused.
To Patrick Dangerfield, whose broken finger subsequently gave him something of
an alibi, and to Scott after another mediocre finals performance by his side.
How can a coach with the greatest home-and-away winloss record serve up seven week-one finals losses, many of them as meek as the loss to Port Adelaide?
More to the point, is Geelong a home-and-away overperformer or a finals underperformer?
So the only possible scenario for Geelong against Greater Western Sydney in Perth on Friday night is to win.
Because a loss will reignite every narrative that has emerged about Geelong and finals over these past 10 seasons:
That the premiership window is slamming shut with 13 players aged 30 or over by round 1 next year.
That Geelong’s homeand-away advantages — slow ball use, regular wins at GMHBA Stadium — are not built to maximise finals glory.
That Scott’s Cats will have significantly underachieved if they cannot add another premiership to his 2011 flag.
From all of Geelong’s harrowing finals defeats this past decade — and there is an evergrowing catalogue of despair — the 2018 elimination final loss to an emerging Melbourne had an end-of-days quality to it. To everyone but Scott. “I can’t work out when our era started and if it’s finished or not,” he said. “I’m not a really big believer in that. I think every year is a year in its own right.”
The problem for Scott is that it is increasingly difficult to make the case that Geelong’s premiership window is wide open long past this year.