Faith/Void

If we’re being honest, if we’re going to attempt impartiality, if we’re going off recent form and stats and player availability and finals history, or even just applying the “whiff test”, then Geelong has little chance to win Friday night’s Prelim Final. But this isn't problematic for Geelong, it’s therapeutic.

As this season more than any other has shown us, the gap between Geelong’s best and worst appears to be largely a mental one. With not much to play for The Cats often cruise through long periods of matches, producing 20 or so minutes of devastating football when they have to (see their third quarter record this year), before putting the cue back in the rack again. This is as frustrating as it is promising; if they’re down you never count them out, you just wonder why they’re down there in the first place.

Rightfully, every man and his dog are saying this is the best chance Hawthorn will get to knock the Geelong monkey off their back. And The Hawks are doing a lot of talking about exactly that this week. They've talked about the preparation they've had, about the 10 weeks of research they've put into Geelong, about how they need to do something different, about how the past doesn't matter and about how the past can’t be ignored. But what they’re saying isn't really that important, it’s that they’re saying so much of it. They haven’t been thinking about this game for two weeks, they've been thinking about it for five years.

The memory of past success steels self belief. It is what has made Geelong’s eleven-match winning streak over Hawthorn possible. It’s what made last week’s third quarter blast against Port Adelaide probable. Geelong will go into this match with the clear conscience of an underdog and the quiet confidence of a champion that habitually beats another team for no reason other than they simply don’t like losing to them.

Similarly, the memory of past failures, of falling at the same hurdle time and again, can instill doubt and hesitation and breed bad habits. Hawthorn will go in to this game the red-hot favourite, with a healthy list, a week’s rest and a convincing victory over Sydney behind them. They will also carry with them the burden of five years of expectation as well as that of their own minds.

Bad habits are never really broken; they’re just replaced. Good habits? We don’t change those at all.