Have Geelong Improved? Or has the Rest of the Comp Gone Backwards?

[beerbandit]

I didn't say they weren't a credible finalist at all.

Lol, mate you’ve been kicking Collingwood flat out for weeks.

You do realise that sides do improve throughout a H&A season don’t you.

Collingwood are just as good as Geelong and Sydney, we were a kick away from both of them. Ask both sets of those teams fans after our games and they wouldn’t of been surprised at us winning the premiership. It is the so called “neutrals” that have a problem with this, not the big sides in it at the business end.

Best of luck to both Geelong and Sydney, may the best team win… Really after watching both games I reckon it’s gunna be really close.

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

Lol, mate you’ve been kicking Collingwood flat out for weeks.

No I haven't.

 

[Rockford]

This year, the standout teams don't exist, and there's only 1 really good team. The rest are good teams and/or up and coming teams. Weirdly, this year these are the teams that have made up the top 6!

A standout.. if you will.

Your obvious agenda is obvious.

 

[BigPond101]

Yes very shrewd OP. I think this Grand Final is totally about how Sydney plays. I think Geelong will bring a 7 out of 10 performance no matter what while Sydney are capable of anything from a 5 (they lose) to a 9 (they win)

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

A standout.. if you will.

Your obvious agenda is obvious.

They're a standout this season, yes.

But in terms of a great team (ie. Richmond, Hawthorn, Brisbane, West Coast, Melbourne etc.) I don't see them as a standout in that sense.

It's been these teams that have stood in Geelong's way recently. But this year, there isn't one.

Fortunately too, there aren't any really good teams either.

 

[PhatBoy]

This is hilarious

 

[SuperVolley11]

They're a standout this season, yes.

But in terms of a great team (ie. Richmond, Hawthorn, Brisbane, West Coast, Melbourne etc.) I don't see them as a standout in that sense.

It's been these teams that have stood in Geelong's way recently. But this year, there isn't one.

Fortunately too, there aren't any really good teams either.

What defines a “great team”

 

[SuperVolley11]

I think the best way to look at it would to be using a statistical profile such as squiggle.

 

[Romeoh1]

To be fair, they did fall over the line by 1 point or whatever to Collingwood in the finals this year.




That's because the opposition is poor. Not because Hawkins and Cameron are magically better players what they used to be. It's because the opposition is inferior to what it's been in previous years.

Cameron is demonstrably better this year at Geelong than he was last year when he didn’t have a proper pre- season.

 

[ourgameplandoesntwork]

That's just childish nonsense.

I stated from the first page of this thread that this is not a knock on Geelong.

It's a knock on the lazy media, and the ignorant footy public.

You are showing yourself to be king of the ignorant. But now posters have provided definitive and unequivocal evidence that Geelong has drastically improved from last year. You can either accept those facts or remain in your ignorance.
I’ll give you some benefit of the doubt that you actually haven’t seen any Geelong games.

 

[PhatBoy]

Something that never seems to get mentioned in these sorts of half-arsed arguments is this:

It’s all very well to say ‘the quality is lower this year because Melbourne has dropped off and Geelong is the only good side or one of the only good sides.’

Last year, Melbourne WERE Geelong this year. Melbourne last year weren’t competing with themselves.

It’s not as though you could look at their flag and go ‘oh look at the quality they were up against - the Bulldogs, Melbourne, Brisbane….. they were up against heaps more than Geelong of 2022.’

They were actually one of those teams.

 

[footyfan1978]

You are showing yourself to be king of the ignorant. But now posters have provided definitive and unequivocal evidence that Geelong has drastically improved from last year. You can either accept those facts or remain in your ignorance.
I’ll give you some benefit of the doubt that you actually haven’t seen any Geelong games.

Let him dig further down his hole for our own amusement.
He could reach China at this rate.

 

[The Final Word]

2007 was a clearer example of the league regressing and leaving the door wide open for the Cats to win it. Weagles list was ridiculously strong everywhere except forward. They had a defence lead by Glass and Wirrpanda, centre square of Cox, Judd, Kerr and Cousins. Problem was they imploded with Cousins' drug issues and injuries seemingly everywhere and still almost limped into a Prelim, literally in the case of Judd who played August and September with OP. Look at the age profile of the 2007 Eagles and they were as likely as anyone to go back to back or three peat. But they just fell apart.

FWIW this season Cats have absolutely improved.

• Z Guthrie
• De Koning
• Holmes
• Miers
• Stengle (compared with Higgins who he's essentially replaced in the side)
• Cameron
• Close
• Atkins

are all absolutely better than 2021. Rohan and Stanley have had much better finals than last year. And the statistical drop off from Dangerfield, Selwood and Duncan has been minimal at worst.

 

[demondavey]

Imagine the club you support had it's best season ever in the weakest comp ever and they still can't make the finals. That makes the Suns year another basket case.

Don't really care if the rest of the comp has gone backwards - our team hasn't. That's why it's great to be a Geelong supporter. Chance for a flag this week, and it won't have asterisks against it. Either team has done it fair and square.

Haha I love the asterisk next to it comment. You played in a losing GF in 2020 and you wouldn’t be saying that if you’d won.

Muppet.

 

[beerbandit]

No I haven't.

Well if you haven’t been kicking them for weeks why are you kicking them now?? The last 3 weeks (finals) were the best Collingwood played all year.

Get a clue mate, your hatred of the Pies is clouding your judgement of them. Collingwood were tremendous in the back half of the season, had there colours lowered only once on Sydney’s home deck, played them again 1 month later and were 1 point away from one of the greatest finals victories of the last 30 years.

Geelong and Sydney are very good football teams also by the way.

 

[Hawksboy72]

Only time will tell on this.
However Melbourne and Richmond basically threw away alot of wins this year.

 

[Hawksboy72]

List balance, maturity and experience. A team that loves its footy, is professional off the field in terms of players not going overboard and doing stupid things, they recruit well and keep refreshing their assistants as well. Well done to them, 11 GF's in 33 years is a heck of an achievement.

Yep a bit of the old "Happy Wife Happy Life" about them.
11 GF's in 33 years not bad.
3 wins & 7 losses.
Same time my boys 7 GF 's for 6 wins.

 

[bigfarter]

I think every team in the league is terrible and whoever wins it has, in fact, lost.

 

[nineteen eighty]

chicken & egg

No chicken and egg in this instance. One only works because of the other. It's a perfect storm for the Cats. New personnel AND change in game plan has meant a GF slot.

 

[z547043]

I reckon you could see around mid season that the more attacking game plan was really paying dividends. That alone has taken their performance to a whole other level

The fact they didn't roll the dice more in the previous couple of seasons after multiple September failures is extraordinary

This about a thousand times. We have improved this year largely due to an improved game style.

From roughly 2018-2021 (possibly earlier), we followed an extreme version of the Hawks/Eagles game plan of possession based football with slow ball movement which created an avoidance of pressure. Come finals time, we learnt there was no avoiding pressure, hence being found out multiple times by Richmond, Melbourne, Collingwood, Sydney etc.

I’m not a Scott hater/lover, but I’m amazed at how much credit he is getting for ‘blowing up the system’ this year. Even Joel when interviewed on Triple M on Saturday wasn’t glowing when speaking of the previous game plan and it didn’t sound like he or the playing group needed much convincing to ‘blow it up’.

While Scott certainly has some amazing traits as a senior coach and despite what much of the footy public and nuffies say, we do not win the 2011 flag without his defensive tweak to our game style that year; My biggest fear is that the hallmark of the Scott legacy if we lose on Saturday, is that he will have wasted the prime years of a Premiership calibre list playing a style of football that did not hold up when it mattered. Hoping that won’t be the case after Saturday.

So to answer the question, no, we are an improved team playing an improved game style, without a shadow of a doubt. Other teams may have gone backwards, I can’t speak for all of them, but you don’t go from an 80 point Preliminary hiding last year to where we are now without improving.

 

[Seeds]

The narrative this year has been about the genius of Chris Scott and his reinvention of Geelong, in order to take them to the next level.

Apparently this is why they're better this year, statistically, than in recent years.

But I put it to you, that Geelong haven't improved at all. They're the same. They're the same Geelong that is a top 4 team with some warhorse superstars, some solid pros, and some average young guys.
The same Geelong that wins enough games at home to have a healthy % to match their win/loss and land in the top 4 - but always seems to find 1 or 2 teams that are just better each year.

The difference this year is not any changes to their game plan. It is not any changes to their personnel. It is that those 1 or 2 teams that are just better than them each year don't exist!

The comp has, without doubt in my mind, gone backwards this year.

That's why the standard feels better - because good teams are playing other good teams, and good teams are playing average teams each week. Not great teams beating up on average teams, and great teams handling good teams comfortably each week.

Collingwood are an average team in any other season. Sydney would be a 'team on the rise' in any other season. The 2022 version of Brisbane does not play in a Prelim in any other season.

St Kilda does not 'just miss the 8' in any other season. I mean s**t, they beat both Geelong and Sydney!

The comp is even, not because the rubbish teams are better this year, but because the great teams don't exist this year, and the really good teams aren't as good as other years.


Now this ain't a bad thing. And it's not a knock on Geelong. I just felt the need to dispel yet another bullshit footy myth that the media spruik and the public lap up.

The game plan has changed dramatically this year. That's the reason.

 

[Evolved1]

It does feel like a weaker year than 21, with potential challengers in Port Adelaide, Carlton, and Richmond underperforming. I expect Carlton and Richmond to challenge for the top 4 next year, and either of those sides could have provided stronger competition for Geelong than Brisbane gave last week.

 

[Freomaniac]

It matters because having a % of 104 indicates you're an average team that hasn't been winning convincingly.

The fact that an average team that hasn't been winning convincingly all year, pushes both GF teams to within a point, suggests that the standard of the competition is very weak this year.

That's funny because freos percentage was like around 110%.

Freo only averages 79-80 points a game in attack. But to round it off, make it 77 points on attack and conceded 70 points in defence. Not really great. Just saying.... As a approximate guess

 

[The Hoops]

Who cares if it’s a weak year. You can only beat what’s put up against you, it’s not our fault the rest of the league is crap!

 

[Meteoric Rise]

List balance, maturity and experience. A team that loves its footy, is professional off the field in terms of players not going overboard and doing stupid things, they recruit well and keep refreshing their assistants as well. Well done to them, 11 GF's in 33 years is a heck of an achievement.

As is 10 Grand Finals in 34 seasons, Geelong's correct figure.

Agree with most others here, Cats have improved on recent years for two main reasons:

1. Availabilty and full fitness of all key players during finals, and

2. Game plan much more suited to finals.

All the tricky in game switching of positions and strategies etc means next to nothing if you get pressure on a team in a final, and the QF v Collingwood showed that quite clearly.

The reason all this probably converts safely into a Premiership[ for the Cats this week is that there is not a strong group of genuine Premiership-worthy teams this season. Some teams with the weapons to potentially worry the Cats most had some issues they couldn’t overcome this season:

- Demons had the AFL’s most damaging big game player Petracca hobbled in finals. And best ruckman in the AFL Gawn clearly below his best post a mid-season injury. Probably their most important forward Tom McDonald was gone after Round 10 and this coincided precisely with Melbourne dropping away sharply, so they were never able to deal with that. The Dees had a few other issues but all teams get some problems. McDonald missing from rd11, Gawn not being right after about that point and Petracca reduced in finals were the key elements of their demise imo. Melbourne also had a much tougher draw than both the Grand Finalists, which allowed them less respite when they were experiencing problems.

- Carlton lost Weitering for a stretch of games at the same time several other key defenders were missing, injured. They lost their key ruckman Pittonet for most of the season, and also key mids Hewett, Cerra, Kennedy and even Walsh missed some games or played below their physical best, often two or more missing games together. There were other injuries too but those were the ones the Blues couldn’t really afford. It is probably fair to say that wrecked any real chance Carlton had of challenging seriously. Carlton also had a tough draw compared to most finalists, certainly a lot tougher than the 2 Grand Finalists.

- Richmond lacked the depth of the other better teams but never had D. Martin quite right even in the 9 games he played. Lynch and Prestia essentially missed 5 crucial games each and the Tigers with their lack of ready-made depth could not afford to lose 24+ games from their best trio if they were going to challenge. Lambert’s body giving way completely was another expensive item on the wrong side of the Richmond ledger. And 2021 B & F Grimes missing late was also damaging with players he has done well against like Cameron and Hipwood performing well in the final. Losing all 5 games decided by a goal or less of course did not help either. I do now believe even Richmond’s lack of a really strong midfield wouldn’t have stopped them contending this season with a good run at it, and their 5 matches v the eventual top 4 seems to back that up. -6 to Swans in Sydney, -3 to Cats, -2 to Lions in the final and +7 over lions and +27 over Collingwood says as much.

If any of those teams were the level of a really strong premier they may possibly have overcome these issues, but if you give either of this years Grand Finalists a similar set of problems I doubt they would be looking so clever. This is just a season where you could throw a blanket over up to 9 teams and those who got the best runs at it were probably likely to go furthest.

This is where I think Geelong “giving themselves a chance” every year is finally going to pay off. Plenty has fallen for them and they are good enough to take advantage in a very very even season(in the top half of the ladder) with no outstanding teams in terms of historical top teams.