Yea both about as bad as each other. Geelong dreadfully unconvincing in both wins. Not good.
A come from behind win against a Port Adelaide team that no-one gave a chance and a patchy win against Hawthorn, who had an straightforward chance to pinch it from us after the siren.
I think that it could easily be argued that our most meritorious finals performance since 2011 was the 2013 Preliminary Final loss, when we coughed up a 20 point three quarter time lead to the Hawks, after somewhat understandably running out of steam.
Let's look at all of those games since the premiership win.
Fremantle, 2012: The Cats had finished the home & away season with a wet sail and had been a rough chance to sneak into the top four late in the season. Getting Fremantle in an MCG Elimination Final was supposed to be a tune up, before we'd give the top four an almighty scare with an extended finals run. Whoops...Fremantle extended the lead past 50 points and after we had a bit of a run to give them a scare, cruised to a comfortable win.
Rating 2/10
Fremantle 2013: The infamous Simonds Stadium Final, which doesn't give enough credit to a fired up Dockers outfit, who simply outplayed us. The absence of Hawkins and Dawson Simpson (before you laugh, have a look at what Simpson was doing that season before he got injured) didn't help and the decision to go with Vardy, Blicavs and Josh Walker against Sandilands (rather than bringing in Trent West, playing Vardy as a forward and leaving Walker out) remains questionable.
EDIT: there was also the mind-boggling decision to make Chapman the sub for his 250th, when he was in good form leading into the game.
Rating 4/10
Port Adelaide 2013: Paul Chapman and James Kelly dragged us over the line in a game that we were in serious danger of losing, against Port, who had been forced to travel to Victoria for the second time in a row, following a surprise win against the Pies. Chapman ended up being suspended for the next game.
Rating 5/10
Hawthorn 2013: We weren't given much of a chance in this one, as we were firmly in the 'QF losers beat the EF winners, then lose to the other QF winners' pattern in 2013. Chapman (who was probably BOG in the Port Adelaide win) and Enright were out and Tom Hawkins clearly shouldn't have been playing. Nevertheless, the Cats took it right up to the Hawks, with Geelong capitalising on its chances, while the Hawks were wasteful.
A seven goal to three third quarter put us within touching distance of another GF, but even at the time, it felt like we would need at least two and probably three goals to hold the Hawks off, as they'd peppered the goals all night and sooner or later, they would click. And so it was. After Franklin kicked the first goal of the last quarter and Josh Caddy nailed a steadier in the eighth minute, the next ten scores went to the Hawks, including the go-ahead goal. Varcoe missed a golden opportunity on the run to tie the scores with less than a minute to go, but really, it's hard to see us winning anyway, if it had gone to extra time.
Rating 7.5/10
Hawthorn 2014: Honestly, I don't remember much about this game, as it sort of blends into the 'Mission Accomplished' match from a few weeks earlier. This was a turning point year for me; we were still winning, but I couldn't count how many games we'd either just got out of jail, or we'd been up by 4-5 goals and couldn't close the door on an inferior opponent, like we would have 3-5 years earlier. Selwood was masterful, but had little help. Comfortable win to Hawthorn.
Rating 3/10
North Melbourne 2014: This is the point where I seriously started to consider whether we were the team that went flat out from April to August to get a good ladder position and then just had nothing left when every other team went up a gear in September. Todd Goldstein at the height of his powers versus Blicavs and Josh Walker...you can probably guess how that match-up went. Tom Hawkins was sensational, but again, just not enough help and too many teammates who barely made a contribution. An exciting comeback, but ultimately another knockout final lost by a kick.
Rating 3/10
Hawthorn 2016: I thought that we actually controlled this game pretty well, though it was an arm wrestle throughout. A burst in the second half of the third quarter gave us the edge, but we couldn't close down the plucky Hawks and they just kept coming back. I think that if Isaac Smith had kicked that goal, we would have been wondering how we lost that game. It felt like we'd done enough with a lot of room for improvement.
Rating 7/10
Sydney 2016: Seven goals to zip in the first quarter and that ended up being pretty much the final margin, with it never getting within 30 points, and blowing out to around 50 at times. A 1.2 to 1.3 final quarter probably sums things up...if you're down by 40-odd heading in to the last quarter of a Preliminary Final, you go all out attack and risk losing by 60 for the slight chance of actually going on a big run. We simply couldn't score against them and I remember the delivery inside 50 being absolutely disgraceful all night. A few players put up decent stats, but really it was exhibit A for the 'Geelong is a two man team' detractors.
Rating 2/10 (one for Selwood and one for Dangerfield)
The MCG factor is important too, not so much that it's Richmond's home ground, but just that we've looked pretty ordinary there for a year (although three wins against Hawthorn has been nice). The obvious reason is that there's too much space for our zone to set up effectively and suffocate the opposition, although the recent game against Collingwood gives me some hope that we've figured it out (three goals against in three quarters). And even though we've kept our winning streak going against Richmond, I can't remember the last time that we really took them to the cleaners (including a get out of jail win last year).