Season 2022 has been replete with nice video games. The primary preliminary last was not one in every of them.
Geelong won’t, nor ought to they, make any apology. Within the first half, they did what they got here to do, what they needed to do. Within the second half, they did as they happy. Within the final quarter, they may have carried out their nails.
Gryan Miers and the Cats have a good time a purpose.Credit score:AFL Images
However even within the triumphal second of their procession into one other grand last, there was for the Cats a bitter-sweet component. Max Holmes, one of many revelations of the season, twanged a hamstring and was subbed out of the sport and possibly out of subsequent week’s finale. On the bench, he blinked again tears.
The story of the evening could possibly be condensed into the primary minute after half-time. A speedy centre break gave Brisbane’s Joe Daniher a uncommon alternative, however he kicked it haplessly out on the complete. Promptly, Geelong raced the ball to the opposite finish of the bottom and the mercurial Tyson Stengle curled a purpose from the boundary line.
Thereafter, the Cats relaxed into their process and the Lions retreated from theirs. However even after a seven-goals-to-two third quarter, Geelong followers allowed themselves not more than a well mannered spherical of applause.
Max Holmes heads to the rooms after hurting a hamstring.Credit score:Getty Photos
You may say it was preliminary acclaim. Like their group within the final quarter, they had been saving themselves. As the sport ran down, the backdrop noise made by the gang of almost 80,000 was a murmur.
It’s a little bit of a preliminary last factor. The stakes are too excessive, the strain too nice. Nerves refuse to unjangle, stomachs to unknot. One group grinds its means into the ascendance and the opposite, with neither honour nor share to play for, trails off and vanishes.
Of final week’s vibrant and fluent Brisbane, there was little to be seen. At half-time, vaunted forwards Charlie Cameron and Dan McStay had been each kickless, Eric Hipwood had had simply two and Daniher had had no influence and would stay goal-less. It’s inescapable that the Lions functioned higher with out Daniher final week, however it might have been a courageous match committee that ignored him.
