AFL Round 1 match review: Geelong v. Hawthorn at Melbourne

Melbourne, March 28

Footy’s back. Well, it restarted on Thursday night but one had to wait until Easter Monday for The Greatest Team Of All™ to begin their campaign.

Both sides signalled their intent with a relentless defensive effort: neither scored until the eighth minute of regulation time, when Luke Breust snapped a major from inside fifty. But it was all Geelong for the rest of the term; Zac Smith, Lincoln McCarthy, Smith again, and Josh Caddy all goaling to put the hoops fifteen points up at the first change.

The biancoazzurri onslaught continued at the resumption: Steven Motlop and McCarthy piled on two more early, and the Cats outgoaled their opponents 7-4, finishing the quarter with a spectacular Tom Hawkins soccer in the goal square. By the main break, Geelong led 11.1.67 to 5.7.37, had won eighty-three contested possessions to the Mayblooms’ sixty-six, and star recruit Paddy DANGERFIELD! had racked up twenty disposals and effectuated five inside fifties.

But there have been strange rumblings in football this weekend, the new cap of ninety mid-quarter interchanges per team per match seemingly causing wild turnarounds in fortunes. And so it was in the third quarter: Puopolo, Gunston, Burgoyne goal but Andrew Mackie can only hit the post; a turnover and Billy Hartung receives the ball from a teammate’s volleyball spike; Puopolo runs onto another loose ball inside the arc and majors; Hawkins misses the lot and Selwood’s nine-iron snap sails through for a behind. A five-goals-to-none third quarter, and the Mustard Pots head into lemon time two points up.

It all came back now: the 2008 Grand Final, the 2013 preliminary final, Easter Monday 2015. That fatalism, that sense of being outgunned by a brown-and-gold máquina that wins premierships and Chooses Swisse. That awful feeling that Hawthorn were about to unleash The Real Julia on us.

Darcy Lang and Jack Gunston traded goals. Dangerfield remonstrated with an umpire after being denied a free kick. Dennis Cometti, demonstrating a superb knowledge of the sport’s history, referred to that line at the top of the goal square as the “kick-off line”. Joel Selwood marked outside fifty and handballed off to Cam Guthrie, whose long-range effort put Geelong two points up.

The new fashion in the ninety-interchange-capped era of footy is to rest midfielders in the forward line, a homage to the Good Old Days when your ruckman spelled in the back pocket and your ruck-rover and your rover occupied the forward pockets. And so it was for the boy from Moggs Creek: mid-way through the final term, he outmuscled the Hawthorn defence, kicked a behind, took a screamer on the shoulders of Ben Stratton near what Cometti again called the “kick-off line”, and booted another behind.

Four points ahead, the Pivotonians’ lead hit double digits with Lachie Henderson’s first major in the hoops, but this state of affairs lasted only as long as Breust’s lovely floating set shot. DANGERFIELD! added to his tally of behinds with a poster before Caddy extended Geelong’s lead.

Luke ‘Bloody Idiot’ Hodge, heretofore having a quiet afternoon, copped Mitch Duncan’s elbow in his face on centre wing, but the subsequent report was the only black spot for the Cats, who stacked on another three goals in the last five minutes to win what Cometti described as “a real tug-of-war at the M.C.G. this afternoon”. Tug-of-war, I recently discovered, was a medal event at the five Summer Olympics between 1900 and 1920, and this was an Olympian effort.

And the most Olympian of them all was DANGERFIELD! The Crows recruit tallied forty-three possessions, breaking the first-match-for-a-new-club record held by Greg Williams (thirty-seven for Sydney after transferring from Geelong in his Brownlow-winning year of 1986). Thanks to his duet with Selwood, Geelong won the centre clearances 51-39 and the inside fifty count 61-46. And ninety interchanges? Who needs them? We only needed eighty-four.

Sydney, March 29

Was this real? Did I dream this? I’d certainly dreamed about something like this all summer:

Dangerfield leads Geelong to 30-point win over Hawthorn

The ABC News24 newsbar said it, so it must be true.

Geelong 18.8.116 – Hawthorn 12.14.86

Goals: Caddy 3, Lang 3, Smith 3, Hawkins 2, McCarthy 2, Blicavs, Guthrie, Henderson, Motlop, Murdoch (Geel.); Gunston 3, Puopolo 3, Breust 2, Langford 2, Burgoyne, Hartung (Haw.)

Best: Dangerfield, Blicavs, Guthrie (Geel.); Mitchell, Frawley, Puopolo (Haw.)