Short Memory, or, How Not To Be Surprised


With the ever-increasing demand for new and up to date information, it’s hard to blame the media. We, as a society, are constantly looking forward, projecting and predicting, trying to see how and where the things we experience now will fit into our future. We are in a rush to know what today means in terms of tomorrow. As a result, we quickly forget yesterday.

For the past four or five weeks we have bombarded with stories, news segments, radio shows and constant chatter about how good Collingwood are and just how many premierships they’re going to win in a row. On “Before The Game”, a few weeks back, Andy Maher went as far as to raise the question of them being the greatest team of all time, saying “we” hadn’t seen a period of dominance like this for a very long time.

This absurdity was uttered in the very same month that Geelong would go on to claim the greatest ever AFL/VFL record over 100 games, winning an amazing 85 of them. This was also in the shadow of Geelong’s last four years in which they crushed every team in their way for months on end, won two premierships, made a Grand Final and a prelim and changed the way the game was played, for all the right reasons.

And what, exactly, had Collingwood done to deserve such lofty claims? At this time last year they were a part of the pack and by seasons end they needed two weeks to claim a premiership that St Kilda were always destined to slip away for, as it turned out, a third time.

Crowning Collingwood now, as Maher and others had been doing for weeks, based on a very good second half of last season and a pretty good start to this one, is not only premature and fraught with danger, but the perfect example of this presented itself not three years ago: As 2008 taught us, they don’t give away flags.

Meanwhile, The Cats made off-season made headlines for the wrong reasons, yet, when they began the season without loss, they continued to be written off. Surely the story was overcoming the loss of premiership winning coach and Brownlow medallist midfielder and continuing to succeed at the highest level when previous contenders, St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs, had so dramatically dropped off.

A few backs, in his increasingly irrelevant column, Mike Sheahan went as far as to raise the question of Geelong being completely finished. That a few days later Geelong would put Hawthorn away after previous impressive wins against Fremantle and Sydney, both away, to remain undefeated, wasn’t even the worst of it: It was the completely ill-considered angle of the article.

Mike claimed that Geelong was “getting by on the class of their top half-dozen” and then went on to list nine players while also noting that the inclusion of Hunt, Menzel and Duncan was “wise” and that they “command places in the best 22”. So, for the record, that’s 12 “top half-dozen” players.

He then went on to say Hawthorn, the ultimate “top half-dozen” team, were in better shape, and yet he could only list five players for them, and that included perennial mirages Cyril Rioli and Shaun Burgoyne. This made absolutely no sense.

When Geelong and Collingwood met last Friday night, the two only unbeaten teams in the league, the money line blew out in Collingwood’s favour, with The Cats drifting out to an outrageous $3 and beyond. It seems everyone had forgotten the two flags, the 85/100, the unbeaten start to the year and the giant chip that settled squarely on Geelong’s shoulder sometime in September 2010.

Now, in the aftermath of (for most people) an unexpected victory, the media have again found a new issue to jump on, the, admittedly misguided and confusing, advantage rule. And Geelong’s early dominance, continued fight and late-game nerve to defeat the seemingly invincible Collingwood will, again, be forgotten.