This, the 115th Grand Final of Australian Football, has all the makings of one of the greatest games ever played. Geelong vs Collingwood. The two dominant teams of the past few years. Geelong the 2007 and 2009 champions and the 2008 runners-up. Collingwood the 2010 champions and home of reigning Brownlow Medallist (league MVP) Dane Swan. Both know what it takes, both have proven they can handle the pressure of playing in front of over 100,000 screaming fans and millions on TV, and both play football about as well as it has ever been played at both the offensive and defensive ends.
And that’s just the first storyline running through this one.
The AFL Grand Final will be shown LIVE on ESPN2 in the US and TSN2 in Canada starting at around midnight this Friday EST. Even if you’ve never watched Australian Football before, this is a spectacle worth seeing. A list of viewing parties is here if you feel like hanging out with drunk expat Aussies on a Friday night, also a spectacle worth seeing. And now back to the scheduled preview)
The Geelong dynasty started to look shaky in 2010, as they crashed out one game short of the big dance in a match where only star player Gary Ablett Jr seemed to be working his ass off to reach what would have been a 4th consecutive grand final appearance. Ablett then took a big money offer to be the franchise player of new team Gold Coast. Long time coach Bomber Thompson quit the club as well. When Geelong appointed a rookie coach, Chris Scott, it seemed like they were resigned to rebuilding. Instead, Geelong has been revitalised, back to their crushing best, with record winning margins and asking Gary Who? The 2nd ranked team after the regular season… but included in that was a crushing win over Collingwood in the final regular season game, and a narrow 3 point victory earlier in the season in controversial circumstances. With easy finals victories, Geelong seems to be in top form at the right time, and Chris Scott is within one game of being the first rookie coach since 1988 to win the title.
But where Chris Scott has coached only 1 season, his opposite number Mick Malthouse has coached 29. A premiership coach at two clubs, he has announced that this Grand Final will be his 664th and last game as a coach at the top level- a chance not only to retire on top, but to retire after going back to back.
The 2010 Grand Final, take 1, ended in only the 3rd ever tied Grand Final in history, requiring everyone to come back for a replay (Why hasn’t the NFL thought of that yet for the Super Bowl? It’d make a lot more money than extra time.) Collingwood comfortably won the rematch, handling the redoubled pressure far better than the opposing Saints. Coming into this season the favourite, they have not disappointed their fans. The best regular season record. The Brownlow medal winner. Old favourite Chris Tarrant, long since traded away, being traded back in for his final season before retirement and somehow becoming a key piece in the team once again. Cult favourite forward, Neon Leon Davis, so badly out of form he was dropped from the team for that Grand Final replay, reinvented himself as a defender so successfully he made the All-Australian team. Everything pointed to Collingwood being rampant favourites even over the Geelong machine… until they struggled to beat a couple of weak teams and then lost to Geelong itself at the end of the regular season.
“They had first place locked up anyway,” we all said “They didn’t want to get injured. They didn’t care. Just wait.”
After they barely squeaked out a come-from-behind victory in the preliminary finals, it became clear that this was not entirely accurate. The juggernaut was still not in top gear. Yet even while below its best, it still found a way to win and make it to the biggest stage of all. Geelong’s failure in the 2008 Grand Final and narrow victory over a weaker foe in 2009 proved they are not invincible here. Collingwood’s motto must be that if it bleeds, they can kill it.
Speaking of bleeding…
If any more spice needed to be added to the speculation stew, two star players faced injury scares this week. Geelong’s genius star forward Stevie Johnson and Collingwood ruckman Darren Jolly, the player they traded for after 2009 in the (correct) belief he was the final piece of their puzzle, are both rated as in doubt. Internet polls seem split about 50/50 as to who is more important to their team’s chances. In this situation, you’d expect both of them to be named in the team no matter what- we won’t know until the last second if one of them will be a “late withdrawal after injury in the warm-up”. My hunch is that neither coach is going to use a player carrying an injury. Collingwood went through this last year, with club stalwart Simon Prestigiacomo missing what would have been his last game before retirement because he couldn’t say he was 100% (ironically the beneficiary of that decision, defender Nathan Brown, has missed this season through injury… allowing another club stalwart, the aforementioned Chris Tarrant, to play HIS final game in the Grand Final).
Prediction:
To use a cliché, football will be the real winner of this clash of such highly skilled and defensively intense teams. It’s inane to say either team is the more hungry or more motivated. But ultimately I’m picking Geelong by 20 points. Collingwood’s game relies on generating turnovers through relentless defensive pressure, and there’s just no evidence that Geelong 2011 can be pressured by anything short of industrial hydraulics. Collingwood to still be favourite for 2012, as their youngsters grow mentally tougher while some of Geelong’s veterans finally retire with their 3rd premiership medallions.
(Image: Wikimedia)
