Great Expectations

For the past 5 years my friends and I have appreciated the absolute luxury of watching football each weekend and expecting to win. No, something more than just expecting to win, it was more assuming it was a done deal and only a matter of by how much and how stylish and economically it could all be done. How slick would the midfield look? Who would Steve Johnson make look stupid? Would we get to see Geelong play “the Geelong way” and for how long? It was a giddy feeling. Introducing yourself to new people was always fun when the talk turned to football; “Who do you go for?” they’d ask, and a split second before answering, an involuntary shit-eating grin would give the game away. It was, and is, a good time to be a Cats fan.

The better you perform, however, the more you are expected to perform. All AFL teams are somewhere along this spectrum. Some, like GWS, Melbourne and Gold Coast, are at the very bottom, where honourable losses are seen as moral victories, and coming up short is a learning experience that builds character. Most teams are somewhere in the middle; Essendon wasn’t expected to beat Carlton, North Melbourne wasn’t expected to beat Geelong. That they both lost the following week was no great surprise to anyone.

The Cats, meanwhile, are at the very top, or end, of this spectrum and have been for a long time. For five years every team in the competition has been using Geelong as a measuring stick, “getting themselves up” for The Cats, essentially treating the game as a final. They’ve copied their game style, invented tactics to counter it, stolen players, coaches, assistant coaches, fitness and support staff. The challenges and the challengers keep coming.

Mentally, this is as fatiguing as anything physically that is thrown at the players. Geelong looked undisciplined against Freo, uninterested against North Melbourne and unenthusiastic against Richmond; all signs of a team not yet fully invested. And this might very well be the case.

The expectation from outside is that The Cats will drop off – they have to. The expectation from Geelong supporters is that they should be flogging teams every week, like ’07 and ’08. Internally, I get the feeling the expectations changed some time ago.

What The Cats learned, painfully in 2008, and then masterfully demonstrated in 2011 (and to a lesser extent 2009) is that you don’t need to be the best team all year, you just need to have the best finals series. And that’s not to say that these things are mutually exclusive, but Geelong no longer risks one for the sake of the other. The Cats know winning is worth 4 points, be it an ugly scrap or a coach-killing belting.

So expect some games where they look a bit flat. Expect them to take the foot of the gas in the fourth quarter. Expect plenty of inexperience in the team. And don’t expect them to finish on top of the ladder. But make no mistake, Geelong’s training, list management and playing strategies and structures will all be aimed towards peaking in September and October, not April and May. Make sure your expectations do too.