Scoring rates: a post-season update

Earlier in the year, I wrote about how the average score per team per match in the AFL was trending downwards this season, and was then sitting at its lowest point since 1968. Over the 198 matches of the home and away season, 4962 goals (at an average of 12.53 per team per match) and 4501 behinds (at an average of 11.37 per team per match) were scored. Teams averaged a score of 86.55 points per match, and 110.24 goals were kicked for every 100 behinds.

The figure of 12.53 goals per team per match is a drop of nearly one whole goal per team per match from last season’s figure of 13.5. The previous lowest since the introduction of twenty-five-minute quarters in 1994 was 13.05 in 1997; the lowest in the post-Colonial era was 13.11 in 2010. In 2000, the figure peaked at 15.18. Prior to the lengthening of quarters, one would have to go back to 1970 to find a lower rate of goals per game (12.38) than this season.

The figure of 11.37 behinds per team per match is also down from last season, when it stood at 11.78. This is also the lowest in the post-1994 era, and the lowest since 1965, when 11.38 behinds were scored per team per match.

The figure of 86.55 points per team per match represents a drop of more than one goal per team per match from 2013, when it was 92.78. The previous lowest post-1994 tally was 90.34 in 1997; the lowest in the post-Colonial era was 90.47 in 2010. The last season in which fewer points were scored per team per match than this one was 1968 (82.08), the last season in which out of bounds on the full resulted in a boundary throw-in; the introduction of free kicks the following season forced teams to centre the ball to avoid being penalised, resulting in a jump in scoring rates of over fifteen points per team per match in 1969.

The fourth statistic, the 110.24 goals per 100 behinds, is the only one mentioned which is not the lowest in the post-1994 AFL; it was only the fourth-lowest, behind 1997 (when it reached 108.5), 1994, and 2007. The rule change made in 2006, which enforced a time limit on set shots, ensures that we will probably never again see the 123.06 goals per 100 behinds figure reached in 2000.

This was a superlative season, the lowest-scoring and fourth most inaccurate of the twenty-five-minute quarter era. Part of this is due to fluctuations in weather conditions, but the downward trend in scoring rates is also due to the way the modern game is played. Teams have mastered the art of defence, applying ferocious pressure when not in possession of the ball. Conceding fewer goals, they need to score fewer goals to win.

Paul Roos and Ross Lyon are the apostles of the new model football, and it arguably reached its apotheosis in the 2013 preliminary final in which Lyon’s Dockers swarmed any Sydney player in possession, and produced a twenty-seven-minute period in which i biancorossi failed to get the ball into their offensive fifty-metre arc. With thirty-six fit bodies huddling around the ball (when they’re not coming on and off the interchange bench), modern football can degenerate into a stop-start series of rolling mauls and ball-ups, but it makes for much more tactically intelligent football than the twenty-five-goals-apiece shoot-outs fondly remembered by nostalgics who preferred the way the game was played ‘back in my day’.

Football is not unique in this regard. Soccer goes through the same cycle, from the catenaccio of Helenio Herrera’s Inter Milan to the totaalvoetbal of Rinus Michels’ Ajax, and from the tiki-taka of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona to the low-possession, reactive style of Inter and Chelsea under José Mourinho. Roos and Lyon are merely the eighteen-man code’s versions of Marcelo Bielsa, whose teams place great emphasis on retrieving the ball high up the pitch when not in possession, and then moving contested ball directly towards the goal. Bielsa has had success with this style in recent seasons at Athletic Bilbao, and is now working his magic at Olympique Marseille. (But the bielsista style affects the two codes differently: it increases scoring rates in soccer while helping to decrease them in football.)

So, congratulations to the league and the clubs for putting on such a great season of football – the best, in my opinion, since the 1990s. All eighteen clubs played to win this year (even Melbourne!) and the fact that three teams tied on points for the minor premiership demonstrates the evenness of the competition.

NRL grand final match review: South Sydney v. Canterbury-Bankstown at Sydney

It has been nineteen years since noted sporting expert Tina Turner proclaimed rugby league ‘simply the best’. South Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown proved her right in front of the [Insert Sponsor’s Name Here] Stadium’s largest post-Olympic crowd, as they played out a bruising and entertaining encounter, the result of which broke the former’s forty-three year premiership hoodoo.

The signs that the match wouldn’t disappoint were evident from the kick-off, whereupon the head of Canterbury enforcer James Graham collided with that of his compatriot Sam Burgess, doing a number on the tough Yorkshireman’s cheekbone. The Bulldogs were jittery and error-prone in the first few minutes, and when they fumbled a sixth-minute bomb into the waiting hands of Lote Tuqiri, the Souths faithful thought that the wait was finally over, until the video showed that the fumble had been caused by a high shot by a Souths player.

The Rabbitohs only had to wait another fourteen minutes to open the scoring, when a penalty put them downfield and Alex Johnston received a crafty shove-pass on the wing. Adam Reynolds made up for the missed conversion in the twenty-seventh minute: Greg Inglis intercepted and advanced to within forty metres of the Bulldogs’ line, the fourth play-the-ball of the set of six was interfered with, and Reynolds duly followed his coach’s instructions to take the two points.

The remainder of the first half proceeded trylessly but not without incident. Josh Morris almost scored Canterbury’s first try but lost control of the ball, which was then pounced on by quick-thinking Souths defenders. Sporadic outbreaks of argy-bargy occurred, usually involving Morris, and threatened to break out into good old-fashioned fisticuffs on the half-time whistle until cooler heads prevailed.

The second half started much the same way as the first, with Souths pressuring Canterbury into making crucial errors in the vicinity of their goal. They failed to capitalise, and the match took a turn seven minutes into the half when i rossoverdi lost the ball inside their own ten. Tony Williams was the beneficiary of a perfectly-weighted grubber on the last tackle, and Trent Hodkinson’s conversion tied the scores at six points apiece.

The Rabbitohs hit back in the fifty-sixth minute, when George Burgess, back on the field after being cleaned up in the first half, received the ball from dummy-half and waltzed his way around a few Canterbury players before grounding under the posts. Two penalties in successive minutes, one for a shoulder-charge and one for interfering with the play-the-ball, gave Adam Reynolds the chance to put Souths further ahead; he fluffed the first and hit the second, bringing the scores to 14-6.

Souths had the momentum, and it was up to Graham to stop it. The feisty Lancastrian stopped the clock in the sixty-eighth minute with a hip-and-shoulder hard enough to put David Tyrrell on a stretcher, and when normal service resumed, Canterbury looked the more likely side. Twice in two minutes they forced Souths to knock on in-goal, and it was when the Bulldogs’ third consecutive set of six was arrested prematurely that the tide finally turned for Souths.

The avalanche began in the seventy-third minute, when a Canterbury smother gave Souths a second kick on the last tackle; Greg Inglis aimed for the far corner, the ball bounced over the heads of one chaser from each team before Kirisome Auva’a grounded. Five minutes later, Adam Reynolds couldn’t believe his luck when he duelled with Sam Perrett for receipt of a kick and the Bulldogs player ran into the goalpost in a slapstick fashion; by converting both of these, he helped put the Bunnies up 26-6, and we had reached the Gatorade-bucket-over-the-head moment.

The icing on the cake was provided by Inglis in the final minute, when he broke through a tired Canterbury line, went one way and then the other, and scored his team’s fifth try. Sam Burgess was given the honours but failed to convert, but it didn’t matter. For the twenty-first time, South Sydney were premiers.

Although he failed to get on the scoresheet, this was Sam Burgess’ match. The man from Dewsbury had Clive Churchill Medallist written all over him, from his first-up head clash, to the blood evident on his face for most of the match, to the tears of joy he shed at the final whistle. I was going to label him the Joel Selwood of the NRL (one of the highest compliments this Geelong supporter can give a sportsman), but my knowledge of northern English sporting history gave me an even better comparison: Bert Trautmann’s match-winning performance in the 1956 FA Cup final, when Manchester City’s German goalkeeper inspired his team to victory despite breaking his neck making a diving save.

Sam, and Souths, you were simply the best.

South Sydney 30 – Canterbury-Bankstown 6

Tries: Johnston 20’; G. Burgess 56’; Auva’a 73’; Reynolds 78’; Inglis 80’ (S. Syd.); Williams 49’ (C.-B.)

Conversions: Reynolds 3/4; S. Burgess 0/1 (S. Syd.); Hodkinson 1/1 (C.-B.)

Penalties: Reynolds 2/3 (S. Syd)

Ovens and Murray grand final match review: Albury v. Yarrawonga at Lavington

Last Sunday, your humble correspondent witnessed the deciding match of the 2014 Ovens and Murray Football League season, the sixth in succession between Albury (the Tigers, playing in black with a yellow sash) and Yarrawonga (the Pigeons, playing in navy and white hoops). The league’s two power clubs, boasting a combined six hundred and sixty-six games of AFL experience between them, played out a thriller in front of a healthy crowd in a match which showcased the best of our great game.

This season, the Tiger ranks were bolstered by the arrival of the O’hAilpin brothers, Setanta and Aisake, late of Carlton, and Brayden O’Hara, a midfielder from Central Districts. The squad, one of the finest ever assembled in country football, took home the minor premiership with sixteen wins, one loss, and one match abandoned (the season opener at home to Yarrawonga, in which young Albury player James McQuillan was airlifted to Melbourne after suffering a spinal injury, which left him a quadriplegic.) Yarrawonga finished third on the ladder, but two wins over second-placed Lavington in the qualifying and preliminary finals (of a McIntyre Final Five, if you’re playing along at home) put them into the Big Game at the End of the Season.

Before the match, as your humble correspondent enjoyed some hot chips and a can of a prominent black fizzy beverage, we were treated to a brilliant rendition of Hunters and Collectors’ ‘Holy Grail’ by local performer Jason Ivill, a song which ought to become the antipodean version of ‘Abide With Me’ and played before the grand final of every football league in the Commonwealth. Legendary Brisbane Lions forward Jonathan Brown, en route to the Brownlow, tossed the coin and we were off. Or, more precisely, Yarrawonga were off – the out-of-towners scored the first three goals of the match, two of them from the boot of our old mucker Brendan Fevola, and it was looking like they would take home their third successive premiership. The nerves of the Tigers faithful were settled, however, by a flurry of goals, one each to Dean Polo (ex-Richmond and -St. Kilda) and Andy Carey, and two to Setanta O’hAilpin. The minor premiers led at quarter time by just four points.

The Tigers’ ascendancy continued in the second term. Despite some poor clearances from defence, they out-goaled the Pigeons five to four. The highlight of the quarter for Albury was an eighteenth-minute running goal for indigenous speedster Lonnie Hampton; for Yarrawonga, it was the leaping grab and subsequent set shot conversion by Fevola in the thirtieth minute which trimmed the margin to twelve points at the half. Despite some minor outbreaks of guernsey-pulling, the match calmed down somewhat in this quarter, and that ingredient which makes country football so delicious – The Biff – would be sadly absent in the second half.

The long break came, and your humble correspondent tucked into a hot dog (our hosts having run out of chips and warm pies) and his second can of the black fizzy beverage. When the teams returned from the sheds, it was again the Pigeons who came out of the blocks firing. You-know-who scored two quick goals within nine minutes to tie the scores at nine goals seven apiece. I gialloneri could manage only behinds in response, allowing Yarrawonga to take the lead with a goal in the twenty-first minute by Jeremy O’Brien. With the Pigeons’ defence keeping the brothers from the Rebel County relatively quiet, the men from Moira Shire smelled blood in the water, but two goals from O’Hara in time on gave the locals an eight-point lead at lemon time.

What followed was a final quarter to remember. A ninth-minute Fevola shot on goal was ruled a behind by the goal umpire without benefit of score review; Albury led by fifteen. Andy Carey marked on the fifty-metre arc and played on to O’Hara in the eleventh minute; the Croweater’s goal (enlarging the margin to twenty-one points) would be Albury’s last. Tigers full-back Michael Thompson got a hand to a Fevola soccer one minute later, and Albury led by twenty despite Fevola’s rather in-your-face protestations to the goal umpire.

Two Yarrawonga goals and then a behind narrowed the margin to eight points. The ‘Big Mo’, as George H. W. Bush called it, was with them as they yet again moved the Sherrin goalwards into the waiting hands of Fevola in the twenty-seventh minute. Situated twenty minutes out and straight in front of goal, and realising that the siren could blow at any second, the former Dancing with the Stars contestant played on, taking two steps to his right and snapping around his body, somehow missing to the right by about one metre. The siren did indeed blow soon after, followed closely by the triumphal strains of ‘Oh we’re from Tigerland / A fighting fury we’re from Tigerland’.

The best defensive football is played on relatively large ovals in dry and warm conditions, and this match was a textbook demonstration of this fact. In a year in which the AFL’s average score per team per match has dropped to the lowest level since 1968 due to the expert application of pressure by defences, the O and M’s Big Two showed that they too adhere to the tenets of Roosism-Lyonism; the air was alive with the glorious sounds of pigskin being smothered and imported talent being unceremoniously thrown onto the turf. Although Fevola and Setanta O’hAilpin bagged six and four goals respectively, they would have had more if not for the efforts of the backmen who kept them quiet, Thompson and Luke Packer of Albury and Connor Hargreaves and Marcus McMillan of Yarrawonga. The latter became, at just nineteen years of age, the first player to be awarded the Did Simpson Medal in a losing side; having already represented country Victoria at under-19 level, he undoubtedly has great things ahead of him.

The flag is Albury’s nineteenth, and after two years of grand final heartbreak, the Ovens and Murray premiership cup has once again taken up residence on the side of the border where it belongs. But what next for the league, and for the Tigers? Six consecutive Albury-Yarrawonga grand finals has brought equalisation to the top of the agenda, and it seems likely that some sort of points system will soon be implemented, limiting the ability of big clubs to recruit players with AFL and state league experience. (A working group of local football identities has already drawn up a scheme, as detailed mid-season in the Border Mail.)

After the demise of the Bendigo Gold left the VFL with fifteen clubs, the Weekly Times published a non-story speculating about Albury replacing them. Of course the club denies any interest, but this club deserves to seek greener pastures, and North Ballarat have already demonstrated how a country club can make the jump. One of these Septembers, we might be hearing ‘Yellow and Black’ blaring out across the Docklands.

Albury 13.13.91 – Yarrawonga 12.12.84

Goals: S. O’hAilpin 4, O’Hara 3, Mitchell 2, Carey, Hampton, A. O’hAilpin, Polo (Alb.); Fevola 6, Pettifer 2, Ednie, Gorman, O’Brien, Seymour (Yarr.)

Best: Polo, Hampton, Packer (Alb.); Hargreaves, Fevola, Gorman (Yarr.)

AFL second semi-final match review: Geelong v. North Melbourne at Melbourne

Rumours of the death of Geelong, Mark Twain would have said if he had been a follower of o jogo australiano, have been greatly exaggerated. The men from Motor City may have become the first team since the 2007 Eagles to go out of Professor McIntyre’s famous finals format in straight sets, but they put on a stunning display of football, and came within six points of out-comebacking the comebackers.

The first sign that we were in for a good night came before the start of the match. After experimenting with having nobodies from the X-Factor sing the national anthem in the first week of the finals, the league went back to the trusty old tape-recorded Julie Anthony version. A good move by the new CEO, and hopefully he follows it up by reverting to the Ross Oakley style of Brownlow vote-reading.

North Melbourne came out of the blocks firing, scoring seven goals to Geelong’s five to lead by twelve at the first change. The score was flattering to the Cats at this stage, their first quarter having been filled with intercepted kick-outs and inside fifties aimed at no-one in particular. The second term was mostly a quiet affair, highlighted by two goals to the Shinboners, a Joel Selwood visit to the bench under the blood rule, and a bit of argy-bargy as the warring sides headed for the sheds. North, supposedly the kings of second halves (as has been noted by every so-called expert football writer on teh interwebs for the past week) carried a four-goal buffer into the long break.

The third saw more of the same; the teams traded goals three times, and Selwood was nearly impaled on the fence when Lindsay Thomas decided to continue the half-time scuffle. With three sirens now having sounded with a lead divisible by six, and neither team ever having more than two behinds than their opponents, the draw was on.

When play resumed, the Pivotonians started well. Josh Walker marked and goaled to bring the margin down to eighteen. Tom Hawkins won his physical duels with Nathan Grima the way he didn’t last week against Brian Lake. Two Jack Ziebell goals appeared to seal it for los norteños, who were now thirty-two in front. Then the Tomahawk added to his two majors from the first quarter, nailing three to put the Hoops thirteen behind.

A score review didn’t go Lincoln McCarthy’s way, and his shot on goal was deemed to have been touched. Twelve points. Then a turnover in the Kangaroos’ forward fifty was punted upfield to Hawkins, who went via Mathew Stokes to Jimmy Bartel, who marked at the goal post. His banana kick went through, and the margin was six points with two and a half minutes remaining. A tense passage of play followed. Geelong bombed the ball forward but North had numbers at the back, and only one of the latter’s many efforts to put the ball into touch was ruled deliberate. The Scott Brothers superclásico ended in victory for Brad. North’s unlikely tilt at the flag isn’t over yet, but neither is the Geelong dynasty.

Geelong 13.14.92 – North Melbourne 14.14.98

Goals: Hawkins 5, Walker 3, Bartel, Blicavs, Caddy, Duncan, Enright (Geel.); Petrie 4, Thomas 3, Ziebell 2, Black, Dal Santo, Goldstein, Harvey, Turner (N. M.)

Best: Hawkins, Selwood, Caddy (Geel.); Goldstein, Dal Santo, Gibson (N. M.)

AFL first qualifying final match review: Sydney v. Fremantle at Sydney

In last season’s preliminary final at Subiaco Oval, Fremantle gave the Swans (and us all) a footballing lesson, putting on a display of pure defensive football unrivalled since Port Adelaide’s demolition of North Adelaide in the 1989 SANFL Grand Final. If the Dockers were to upset the minor premiers at the Olympic Stadium, they would need to repeat that magnificent performance.

There was just one problem: it’s been bucketing down intermittently here in the Emerald City for the last fortnight. The rain brought the Melbourne Storm unstuck against Easts at Moore Park last Saturday night, and it threatened to do the same to the purple-clad chaps from the State of Excitement. The damp surface promised a return to the wet-weather footy of yore, as it was played by men like Matthews and Carey back in the Good Old Days before this great game of ours was basketball-ified and Etihad-ised.

It didn’t feel so much like Heritage Round as Multicultural Round when Tendai Mzungu slotted home the first of the match. Buddy Franklin and Matthew Pavlich were among the scorers as both teams went into the first break with three goals, the Swans leading by three as a result of their superior tally of behinds. Pavlich was again on the scoresheet when he finished off a coast-to-coast Fremantle play to put the visitors ahead with the first score of the second quarter. Ben McGlynn answered straight away for the Bloods, and then the match took a defensive turn.

It was twenty minutes before we witnessed the next major score. There were a few behinds from some inaccurate stabs at the sticks, but with a wet ground and two sides skilled at high pressure defensive football, the quarter was permeated with smothers, blocks, one-percenters, and general tit-for-tat. Everyone thought Buddy would break the deadlock, but Alex Silvagni mercilessly brought him down. Jarrad McVeigh found Kurt Tippett at the goal post, then Pavlich answered with a soccer-style goal with three Sydney defenders on his tail, and the home side led by five points at the half.

At the mid-point of the third stanza, i biancorossi led by three. Two more goals had been kicked: McGlynn from a free kick and Mzungu from a turnover. This quarter had the same feel about it as the second until Lewis Jetta marked and goaled, and then Adam Goodes did the same after getting underneath a bomb, and the margin stood at fifteen. Kieren Jack’s bending effort after the siren extended it to twenty-two. Franklin and Tippett had been quiet, and John Longmire’s decision to move them into the midfield turned out to be a masterstroke.

La viola knew they had to come out firing. Cameron Sutcliffe got them started, and when Pavlich grabbed a bouncing ball and swirled it in from the pocket, the comeback was on. Franklin hit back immediately with a brace of goals, and all of a sudden we had a shoot-out: four goals had been scored before the quarter had been going for three minutes. The watersiders will rue the missed opportunities of that quarter: the missed set shots, the pushes forward wasted for a lack of targets, and the brilliant Swans pressing that forced Silvagni to skew one into the stands.

The minor premiers put the icing on the cake with a polished move in the final minute. Rhyce Shaw to Franklin, back to Shaw, to Franklin again, and a punt up forward to find the waiting arms of Dan Hannebery. They matched the vanguard party of Marxism-Lyonism at their own (defensive) game, and continued to excel when the match broke apart into a shoot-out. Worthy minor premiers, and your humble correspondent fears what they can do to his Cats in two weeks’ time.

Sydney 13.15.93 – Fremantle 10.9.69

Goals: Franklin 3, McGlynn 3, Goodes, Hannebery, Jack, Jetta, Parker, Pyke, Tippett (Syd.); Pavlich 4, Mzungu 2, Fyfe, Mundy, Sutcliffe, Walters (Frem.)

Best: McGlynn, McVeigh, Hannebery (Syd.); Pavlich, Barlow, Fyfe (Frem.)

AFL second qualifying final match review: Hawthorn v. Geelong at Melbourne

The football-viewing public of the Commonwealth were on Friday night treated to another classic edition of the modern antipodean equivalent of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry. For the second time in a fortnight, Hawthorn galloped home in the second half, and booked themselves a home preliminary final.

The first quarter was the archetypal ‘game of two halves’. As the Melbourne Cricket Ground recovered from the murdering of the national anthem by some X-Factor contestant or other, it was all Geelong for the first ten to fifteen minutes. Joel Selwood bagged the first of the night after a Luke Hodge kick from defence was intercepted, and after a few minutes of back-and-forth, Jimmy Bartel put the Cats two goals up. Geelong defended solidly to neutralise Luke Breust (who failed to goal until early in the final stanza), but Hawthorn applied such forward pressure as to back the Pivotonians into a corner in their backline on two occasions. The Hawks hit back with three goals by the end of the quarter and led by nine at the first change.

Geelong quickly regained the lead after scoring the first two goals of the second quarter: the first a set shot resulting from a soaring Jimmy Bartel mark, the second the product of Tom Hawkins combining with Selwood in front of an open goal. But in true Hegelian fashion, thesis was followed by antithesis, and Hawthorn scored the next three to lead by fourteen points. Two behinds later, Jordan Murdoch goaled to put Geelong six behind with forty-one seconds left on the clock. A well-executed centre clearance allowed Josh Walker to convert a set shot to leave the teams tied at 6.5.41 apiece at the long break.

David Hale and Joel Selwood traded goals to open the third term, signalling that the second half would be as tight as the first. Minutes later, Geelong hit the front through Tom Hawkins, whose first goal of the match came via a free kick arising from his much-anticipated physical duel with Brian Lake. Geelong native Hodge reclaimed the lead when he marked and executed an exquisite checkside. Jack Gunston hit the next two, leading Bruce McAveney to treat the viewers to a dose of The Bleeding Obvious with his observation that “they need a goal, Geelong.”

They would get two thereafter, the only problem being that the Mustard Pots snagged five. Jarryd Roughead sealed the win with a set-shot snap eight minutes from time, and it was time to flick over to the Scottish lesbians on SBS2.

Geelong must now win three matches for the title, including a preliminary final at either Homebush or Subiaco Oval. They played like a third-on-the-ladder team – frustrating to watch for fans who know that this Golden Generation is capable of so much more. They played with too little aggression – Hawkins’ tussles with Lake and Steve Johnson’s cheek wound notwithstanding – and were poor when trying to clear the Sherrin away from those swarms of bodies around the ball which characterise il football moderno. The winner of the North Melbourne-Essendon elimination final awaits.

Hawthorn 15.14.104 – Geelong 10.8.68

Goals: Gunston 3, Lewis 3, Puopolo 2, Roughead 2, Breust, Hale, Hodge, Langford, Smith (Haw.); Selwood 3, Bartel 2, Blicavs, Hawkins, Johnson, Murdoch, Walker (Geel.)

Best: Mitchell, Gunston, Hill (Haw.); Selwood, Bartel, Stokes (Geel.)

AFL round 22 match review: Hawthorn v. Geelong at Melbourne

The battle for second place on this season’s AFL ladder was played out on Saturday night in front of a crowd of seventy-two thousand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The result, at least from the perspective of your humble correspondent, was disappointing; the match, however, was another exhibition of the high standard of football which has been played this season, and set the scene for the likely second leg of this encounter in the first week of the finals.

It all started so well for the Cats. After a three-goal first quarter, they led by six points at the first break. Hawthorn equalised in the fifth minute of the second term and kept having numbers at the back, but what followed was a purple patch for Geelong. First Tom Hawkins outran Brian Lake, then Jimmy Bartel converted a free kick, then Hawkins again won a duel with Lake and executed a Gaelic-style set-shot snap. Two more goals followed and Geelong led by thirty-one at the half. When the boy from Finley marked in the goal square early in the third quarter, the Pivotonians went thirty-three up.

To this point, the match had been played at a staccato rhythm. Geelong’s early lead was countered by Hawthorn, and Geelong’s second break from the pack was chased down by the brown and gold peloton. A turnover led to a length-of-the-field play resulting in David Hale’s first goal of the night; three more followed in quick succession to narrow the margin to nine points. Sam Mitchell thought he’d taken it down to three when he converted a set shot from the fifty metre arc, but an indecisive score review ensured that the goal umpire’s original ruling that the kick had been touched on the line would stand.

Hawthorn made amends straight away through Hale, and Will Langford’s post-siren goal put the Mayblooms ahead at lemon time, 9.7.61 to 9.3.57. When the teams returned for the final quarter, it really started to All Go Pete Tong for i biancoblu. Four Hawthorn goals were answered only by a Geelong behind, and the margin ballooned out to twenty-eight points. The way Geelong were being outclassed tactically brought back memories of the 110-point loss to the Swans, as they struggled to get the ball out of defence and punted it skyward to no-one in particular on the occasions that they did.

Midway through the final term, the pendulum began to swing back. Geelong kept winning the ball out of the centre, and two late goals sparked hopes of a comeback. But it was never really on, and Brad Sewell made sure of it by booting the final goal. Hawthorn triumphed by twenty-three points in the end, but what did they win? Four premiership points, another nail into the coffin of the so-called ‘Kennett Curse’, and the right to wear their oh-so-haute couture brown shorts by dint of being the ‘home’ team in the qualifying final. See you again in a fortnight, Hawks.

Hawthorn 14.10.94 – Geelong 11.5.71

Goals: Hale 3, Roughead 3, Langford 2, Breust, Cegler, Gunston, Lewis, Sewell, Shiels (Haw.); Hawkins 3, Murdoch 2, Bartel, Duncan, Motlop, Selwood, Taylor, Thurlow (Geel.)

Best: Mitchell, Langford, Gibson (Haw.); Duncan, Caddy, Stokes (Geel.)