- Sep 15, 2005
- 13,075
- 20,637
- AFL Club
- Geelong
A return to the finals in 2016 after a 10th place finish in 2015 was all but expected by most Cats fans after the recruitment of Patrick Dangerfield, Lachie Henderson, Zac Smith and Scott Selwood in the off-season.
This buy-now-pay-later list management approach is becoming more accepted in the free agency age, but we saw how it worked out for Michael Voss at Brisbane just a few years ago when a club decides to mortgage it's draft selections (and in Geelong's case, future draft selections) in the hope of chasing a quick flag. You'd wanna actually snag that flag within a pretty short period.
After a string of lacklustre finals performances under Chris Scott post-2011, merely returning to the finals after missing in 2015 wouldn't be quite enough.
Personally, I always had the expectation that the club would win at least one final in 2016, and seriously challenge in 2017, with the entire approach to be reviewed post-2017 in the absence of a flag.
I still hold by that, and so to me 2016 was a pass mark. Just.
We won a final of course, and against Hawthorn no less, but despite the talents of a few individuals we only gelled as a team periodically, despite good results in this diluted competition.
The issues that were on display all year long didn't magically go away come finals time; and in the Preliminary Final those issues and weaknesses were magnified and exploited.
Issue number one, all season long, was getting bang for our buck with our forward entries - this is no new problem; we've seen this club struggle with fluency in and around the forward 50 for years now.
In the past this was generally an effect of having employed a hard press; we'd clog up our own half of the ground, lock it in, and then struggle to work through the congestion to actually score.
This year there was more of the same, but if anything we regressed; even when we were counter-attacking or had forced a turnover, and had opposition team's defenses at our mercy, we regularly chose poor options when moving the ball forward.
The whole team has to take responsibility with this problem we have moving the ball into the forward 50; it often starts with the glacial ball movement out of the defensive 50.
Our midfield is good enough to generate sufficient forward entries to win plenty of games of football, but the actually delivery is not that of a premiership team. Joel Selwood is exempt from this; his use of the ball is measured when he has a half-chance to set up.
Unfortunately, Patrick Dangerfield was one of the worst offenders when it came to delivering into the forward 50 with anything like precision.
Apart from the haphazard delivery into the forward 50, the movement and plain effectiveness of the forwards themselves was most often disorganized and lacking in both cleanness and creativity.
Hawkins only ever had makeshift key position support, and had to contend with his own form issues during long stretches of 2016.
Sometimes Stanley would stand up. Occasionally Smith. Shane Kersten had a stab at it for a while, sort of. Even Mitch Clark was speculatively trialed for one game.
Lachie Henderson and Harry Taylor were both thrown forward in desperation in the 2nd half of the year.
As for the other forwards; Lincoln McCarthy made great and somewhat unexpected strides this year, but he needs to link up more by leading hard into space Chappy-style. Dan Menzel doesn't do this quite enough either.
Shane Kersten needed to do it way more.
Nakia Cockatoo and Darcy Lang are probably the only players already listed that can potentially add something to that forward mix. Maybe Murdoch
Billie Smedts remains the great unknown as a forward .
The defensive end lost Jackson Thurlow before the season began; his clean footskills and run would be missed season-long; we had no adequate replacement for what we expected him to provide.
Expect him to be somewhat rusty in 2017, anything more is a bonus. He is a class player though and I look forward to seeing him back in action.
The much-debated height of the backline was routinely queried but regularly stood up to scrutiny from a purely defensive perspective. Lonergan, Henderson and Taylor all had solid-to-good years.
But there was little run and sharp ball movement from the back half in 2016.
Andrew Mackie's ability to counter-attack and use the ball well by foot largely dried up; he still gets a bit of the ball, but it is more often than not rushed.
Corey Enright was resolute and had a ridiculous mid/late season patch of strong form; his rebound, if not exactly dashing, still represented Geelong's best bet of unlocking opposition set-ups
Tom Ruggles and Jed Bews fought a nil-all draw; neither is established as the defacto small defender, and yet both should be able to take positives from the year. Ruggles played plenty of football and got a real idea of what is needed to be effective. Bews was in and out of the team despite showing improvement.
Jake Kolodjashnij is the invisible man of the backline despite playing 20 games in 2016. I like him; he defends. He needs to make more of his athleticism and once he gets more confidence in his role I think his foot skills are a bit better than some might think.
Ruckmen Zac Smith and Rhys Stanley were an improvement on the combos of the past few years, and yet their efforts were sometimes frustrating.
Smith showed flashes of intensity, clearing the ball from stoppages with vigour, taking the odd awkward mark, kicking the odd awkward goal and laying the odd oddly effective tackle.
But just as often he went quiet, jogging around when he might have been throwing his weight around.
Still; we got a lot more out of him than I would have suspected when we acquired him.
Rhys Stanley is probably more frustrating than Smith because he has undeniable talent and athletic gifts.
He did impose himself on games at times, to be fair. But his decision-making and execution need to improve if he is to maximize his opportunities. Both are only fair tap-ruckmen. This might sound stupid, but Blicavs actually palms the ball more cleanly than either of them.
Paidrag Lucey continues to bide his time, looking for a four-leafed clover. There was that other skinny tall bloke who had some kinda glandular-fever thingy, but he's fallen off the radar Cunico-style.
The much-talked about '2nd tier' of mid/forwards were far too inconsistent.
After the round 1 win against Hawthorn it looked as though Josh Caddy, Mitch Duncan, Cam Guthrie, Mark Blicavs, Steven Motlop - hell, maybe even Jordan Murdoch - would thrive with the addition of Patrick Dangerfield to the midfield rotations.
But as a group, they made little progress, if any.
Mitch Duncan played every game, had a career-high in tackles and matched his career-high average disposals per game. His goalkicking output was down, although he generally seemed to play off the back of the square.
I thought his finals series was good, apart from a couple of pretty bad mistakes.
But overall, he just didn't show much improvement on what we'd seen in the past. I'm not sure he has much in him. At best, he may have slightly reduced the gap between his best and worst games in 2016. But the highs were less frequent.
Mark Blicavs' stats were similar to last year when he won the B&F in a side which finished 10th, but in 2016 he too often played hesitant football with ball in hand.
His tackling remains an asset, but after a year as a back-up ruckman and a year as a genuine midfielder, his best position is still up in the air.
I see him staying on the list pretty comfortably, but the club needs to be smart with his continued development. How well could he play back on a consistent basis?
Josh Caddy doesn't get quite enough of the ball to be a mid, nor does he kick quite enough goals to be a forward. He just never seems to get to enough contests for the type of player he is. I'm not sure where he's at.
Cam Guthrie's first half of the season has largely been forgotten in the light of a patchy second half of the year, but he has shown he can step up a level. His finals series was ok.
I have no worries with his career trajectory to this point, I reckon he's the best of that mid tier.
Steven Motlop; bloody hell.
He's had a fall from grace. After signing a healthy contract in 2015 his lack of fitness coming into the season was a talking point. His output was all over the place.
He did produce some good form here and there. But a lot of his efforts were panicked, he rarely gets a break on his opponent through pure leg speed anymore. Nor does he win one-on-one contests with creative play. He's 112 games into his career and going backwards. Played every game in 2016 and came behind only Hawkins in goals kicked for the year. His banana goal from the boundary after the siren against lowly Essendon was one of the season highlights for me; pure skill. Would now trade though.
Lastly, 'Dangerwood'.
Patrick Dangerfield brought his talents to the club Lebron-style, and he'll probably add a Brownlow to his MVP award.
You can't ask much more from him.
And yet I do. A player of his ability shouldn't shank and burn the ball as much as he does. I don't want to denigrate his efforts, because he was a beast this year and was a huge reason as to why Geelong reached the top 4. But he has room for improvement with his disposal and decision-making.
1 goal per game is good, but from a player with his gifts and attacking instincts he should be kicking a few more. Gotta mark the champs hard.
Joel Selwood will come runner up, maybe third, to Dangerfield this year, but his contribution was huge.
Despite an injury-hampered pre-season he played every game and averaged a career-high disposals.
And Selwood's disposals count. Massively underrated for just how effective he is at finding a team mate by hand or foot. His finals series was huge despite the ambiguous results.
TL; DR summary:
2016 a bare pass mark; 2017 is judgement day for the Chris Scott tenure.
This buy-now-pay-later list management approach is becoming more accepted in the free agency age, but we saw how it worked out for Michael Voss at Brisbane just a few years ago when a club decides to mortgage it's draft selections (and in Geelong's case, future draft selections) in the hope of chasing a quick flag. You'd wanna actually snag that flag within a pretty short period.
After a string of lacklustre finals performances under Chris Scott post-2011, merely returning to the finals after missing in 2015 wouldn't be quite enough.
Personally, I always had the expectation that the club would win at least one final in 2016, and seriously challenge in 2017, with the entire approach to be reviewed post-2017 in the absence of a flag.
I still hold by that, and so to me 2016 was a pass mark. Just.
We won a final of course, and against Hawthorn no less, but despite the talents of a few individuals we only gelled as a team periodically, despite good results in this diluted competition.
The issues that were on display all year long didn't magically go away come finals time; and in the Preliminary Final those issues and weaknesses were magnified and exploited.
Issue number one, all season long, was getting bang for our buck with our forward entries - this is no new problem; we've seen this club struggle with fluency in and around the forward 50 for years now.
In the past this was generally an effect of having employed a hard press; we'd clog up our own half of the ground, lock it in, and then struggle to work through the congestion to actually score.
This year there was more of the same, but if anything we regressed; even when we were counter-attacking or had forced a turnover, and had opposition team's defenses at our mercy, we regularly chose poor options when moving the ball forward.
The whole team has to take responsibility with this problem we have moving the ball into the forward 50; it often starts with the glacial ball movement out of the defensive 50.
Our midfield is good enough to generate sufficient forward entries to win plenty of games of football, but the actually delivery is not that of a premiership team. Joel Selwood is exempt from this; his use of the ball is measured when he has a half-chance to set up.
Unfortunately, Patrick Dangerfield was one of the worst offenders when it came to delivering into the forward 50 with anything like precision.
Apart from the haphazard delivery into the forward 50, the movement and plain effectiveness of the forwards themselves was most often disorganized and lacking in both cleanness and creativity.
Hawkins only ever had makeshift key position support, and had to contend with his own form issues during long stretches of 2016.
Sometimes Stanley would stand up. Occasionally Smith. Shane Kersten had a stab at it for a while, sort of. Even Mitch Clark was speculatively trialed for one game.
Lachie Henderson and Harry Taylor were both thrown forward in desperation in the 2nd half of the year.
As for the other forwards; Lincoln McCarthy made great and somewhat unexpected strides this year, but he needs to link up more by leading hard into space Chappy-style. Dan Menzel doesn't do this quite enough either.
Shane Kersten needed to do it way more.
Nakia Cockatoo and Darcy Lang are probably the only players already listed that can potentially add something to that forward mix. Maybe Murdoch
Billie Smedts remains the great unknown as a forward .The defensive end lost Jackson Thurlow before the season began; his clean footskills and run would be missed season-long; we had no adequate replacement for what we expected him to provide.
Expect him to be somewhat rusty in 2017, anything more is a bonus. He is a class player though and I look forward to seeing him back in action.
The much-debated height of the backline was routinely queried but regularly stood up to scrutiny from a purely defensive perspective. Lonergan, Henderson and Taylor all had solid-to-good years.
But there was little run and sharp ball movement from the back half in 2016.
Andrew Mackie's ability to counter-attack and use the ball well by foot largely dried up; he still gets a bit of the ball, but it is more often than not rushed.
Corey Enright was resolute and had a ridiculous mid/late season patch of strong form; his rebound, if not exactly dashing, still represented Geelong's best bet of unlocking opposition set-ups
Tom Ruggles and Jed Bews fought a nil-all draw; neither is established as the defacto small defender, and yet both should be able to take positives from the year. Ruggles played plenty of football and got a real idea of what is needed to be effective. Bews was in and out of the team despite showing improvement.
Jake Kolodjashnij is the invisible man of the backline despite playing 20 games in 2016. I like him; he defends. He needs to make more of his athleticism and once he gets more confidence in his role I think his foot skills are a bit better than some might think.
Ruckmen Zac Smith and Rhys Stanley were an improvement on the combos of the past few years, and yet their efforts were sometimes frustrating.
Smith showed flashes of intensity, clearing the ball from stoppages with vigour, taking the odd awkward mark, kicking the odd awkward goal and laying the odd oddly effective tackle.
But just as often he went quiet, jogging around when he might have been throwing his weight around.
Still; we got a lot more out of him than I would have suspected when we acquired him.
Rhys Stanley is probably more frustrating than Smith because he has undeniable talent and athletic gifts.
He did impose himself on games at times, to be fair. But his decision-making and execution need to improve if he is to maximize his opportunities. Both are only fair tap-ruckmen. This might sound stupid, but Blicavs actually palms the ball more cleanly than either of them.
Paidrag Lucey continues to bide his time, looking for a four-leafed clover. There was that other skinny tall bloke who had some kinda glandular-fever thingy, but he's fallen off the radar Cunico-style.
The much-talked about '2nd tier' of mid/forwards were far too inconsistent.
After the round 1 win against Hawthorn it looked as though Josh Caddy, Mitch Duncan, Cam Guthrie, Mark Blicavs, Steven Motlop - hell, maybe even Jordan Murdoch - would thrive with the addition of Patrick Dangerfield to the midfield rotations.
But as a group, they made little progress, if any.
Mitch Duncan played every game, had a career-high in tackles and matched his career-high average disposals per game. His goalkicking output was down, although he generally seemed to play off the back of the square.
I thought his finals series was good, apart from a couple of pretty bad mistakes.
But overall, he just didn't show much improvement on what we'd seen in the past. I'm not sure he has much in him. At best, he may have slightly reduced the gap between his best and worst games in 2016. But the highs were less frequent.
Mark Blicavs' stats were similar to last year when he won the B&F in a side which finished 10th, but in 2016 he too often played hesitant football with ball in hand.
His tackling remains an asset, but after a year as a back-up ruckman and a year as a genuine midfielder, his best position is still up in the air.
I see him staying on the list pretty comfortably, but the club needs to be smart with his continued development. How well could he play back on a consistent basis?
Josh Caddy doesn't get quite enough of the ball to be a mid, nor does he kick quite enough goals to be a forward. He just never seems to get to enough contests for the type of player he is. I'm not sure where he's at.
Cam Guthrie's first half of the season has largely been forgotten in the light of a patchy second half of the year, but he has shown he can step up a level. His finals series was ok.
I have no worries with his career trajectory to this point, I reckon he's the best of that mid tier.
Steven Motlop; bloody hell.
He's had a fall from grace. After signing a healthy contract in 2015 his lack of fitness coming into the season was a talking point. His output was all over the place.
He did produce some good form here and there. But a lot of his efforts were panicked, he rarely gets a break on his opponent through pure leg speed anymore. Nor does he win one-on-one contests with creative play. He's 112 games into his career and going backwards. Played every game in 2016 and came behind only Hawkins in goals kicked for the year. His banana goal from the boundary after the siren against lowly Essendon was one of the season highlights for me; pure skill. Would now trade though.
Lastly, 'Dangerwood'.
Patrick Dangerfield brought his talents to the club Lebron-style, and he'll probably add a Brownlow to his MVP award.
You can't ask much more from him.
And yet I do. A player of his ability shouldn't shank and burn the ball as much as he does. I don't want to denigrate his efforts, because he was a beast this year and was a huge reason as to why Geelong reached the top 4. But he has room for improvement with his disposal and decision-making.
1 goal per game is good, but from a player with his gifts and attacking instincts he should be kicking a few more. Gotta mark the champs hard.
Joel Selwood will come runner up, maybe third, to Dangerfield this year, but his contribution was huge.
Despite an injury-hampered pre-season he played every game and averaged a career-high disposals.
And Selwood's disposals count. Massively underrated for just how effective he is at finding a team mate by hand or foot. His finals series was huge despite the ambiguous results.
TL; DR summary:
2016 a bare pass mark; 2017 is judgement day for the Chris Scott tenure.
