Written by I must admit, I enjoyed watching the Cats-Crows match this past weekend. A Sunday twilight match in Oz translates to a Saturday near-midnight match in California. The match was so exciting I had trouble getting to sleep when it was over at about 2:20 Sunday morning.
Trouble is, the match shouldn’t have been exciting. Or, perhaps, it was the wrong kind of exciting.
The Cats-Melbourne match a couple of weeks prior was exciting to the very end, as the Cats seriously threatened the all-time scoring record as well as the all-time victory margin record. Great kind of exciting. While the match against the Suns in Round 21 was fun to watch, it turned out to be less exciting when towards the beginning of the third period it became clear that no all-time records were going to fall (unless you include the all-time biggest Geelong defeat of the Suns). But the Suns match had other elements to recommend itself, which, undoubtedly were lessened by the absence of Gazza on the field of dreams. It was satisfying to see the Cats play such successful team footy against the Suns, almost – but not completely – like clockwork.
Cat and Mouse.
Comparing the victory vs. the Suns at Kardinia with the earlier match at Carrara, one couldn’t help but think the Cats had progressed. Coming the week after the near-record defeat of the Demons, it seemed that everything had come together and the Cats were firing on all cylinders, ready to roll on into the finals at full speed.
Granted that the Dees and Suns weren’t exactly at the top of the heap – though, incredibly, the Dees are still in the hunt for a finals berth — but both clubs, the youngest and the oldest in the competition, are, after all, professional footy sides in a league with a salary cap. Slaughters are meant for kids’ leagues, which is presumably why many of them have “mercy rules” (at least in the US, that is). But not in pro sports. Certainly not the AFL. So it’s little wonder that the Cats’ smashing victories, combined with a couple of lopsided wins from other sides, led the press to theorize on the unevenness of the competition and the AFL leadership to get defensive about the overall competitiveness of the league.
This Sunday’s defeat of the Crows would have been immensely satisfying – if it had been against, say, Collingwood. If it had been a Grand Final, it would have been a match for the ages — with the benefit of having the right outcome. (A Hawks friend lent me the dvd of the 1989 Grand Final, reputed to be one of the greatest ever and which took place way before I’d ever heard of footy; I still don’t have the heart to watch it, especially after 2008).
But the Crows are languishing at the bottom of the league somewhere between the Dees and the Suns. So much for the well-oiled Cat juggernaut theory. The narrow, hard-fought victory seems to suggest that the Cats are eminently vulnerable to the other top sides, especially Collingwood and also Hawthorn, whom they’re likely to meet in the first round of the finals.
I only say this after having watched all four quarters of the Cats-Crows clash. In fact, after the Cats picked up the pace in the second quarter, I thought we were going to see a steady increase in the lead throughout the match, resulting in a comfortable victory, never in doubt, if not a slaughter. When the lead remained at three goals after three quarters, I remembered the Collingwood match vs. Adelaide in Round 9. At three-quarter time in that match, the Crows were actually up by 12. The Pies then went on to make the final term a display of Footy 101, kicking 11 goals en route to a 43 point victory. Quite frankly, I expected something somewhat similar…
Although after a Shannon Byrnes goal the Cats built up a 4 goal lead in the fourth term, the Crows came back and managed to close to within a kick, and the Cat victory wasn’t sealed until another Byrnes goal in the waning minutes of the game. Considering that Byrnes’s contributions to the team this year have been limited, it was great to see him play a crucial role in an eventual Cat victory. But why weren’t the regulars able to seal the deal? Perhaps that will turn out to be the ultimate strength and greatness of the 2011 Cats: it’s truly a team effort, and you never know who will step in to get the job done. On the other hand at the third quarter break, the TV commentators were speculating that the fourth quarter could go the Crows’ way, as the Crows are a younger side and their younger legs would prevail as the “older” Cats finally tired. That would seem to be the opposite of Collingwood’s fourth quarter against the Crows and perhaps it should give Cat nation some pause for concern moving into finals season.
What made the match so unnecessarily (from a Cats’ perspective) exciting, i.e. close? One of the keys, of course, was ball possession or the lack thereof. The most obvious truism of any ball sport, except for baseball or cricket, is: “You need to have the ball to score.” The Cats weren’t in control of the ball enough. They weren’t winning clearances and they had difficulties withstanding the Crows’ full-field press, both offensively and defensively. Chappy’s not knowing where to kick the ball out after a behind reminded me of Kobe Bryant’s not being able to make an inbound pass when the Dallas Mavericks demolished the Lakers in the NBA playoffs earlier this year. Yes, that kind of momentary paralysis is the sign of good defense, but there needs to be a plan in place to deal with and counteract such defensive pressures.
Because of the press, the Cats’ own defense initially looked ineffective, though with the massive disposal disadvantage, it was the Cats’ solid D which ultimately kept them in the game. Not even the return of Scarlo can defend against the statistical imbalance in clearances, disposals, contested possessions and inside-50’s. Yes, I’m still a relative footy greenhorn, but aren’t these supposed to be the basics of the game?
I also noted a couple of set-shot misses that the Cats should have made, but even so, we had fewer behinds than the Crows so the tightness of the game can’t be put down to kicking inaccuracy. Still, while watching the match, I couldn’t help but feel a letdown when J-Pod missed a kick after a great mark (don’t know if the mark would rise to the definition of “specie,” but it looked pretty awesome to me). I noted that Chris Scott mentioned this miss-post-speccie at the post-game press conference, so I felt a bit less guilty at my feelings of disappointment towards Pods, who otherwise had a great game, including on the defensive side. But an errant kick after a speccie is in some ways like letting the air out of a Cat-shaped balloon: gotta finish the job – it’s not just an additional 5 points, but it’s also the momentum which can completely color the complexion of the game.
There also seemed to be unmistakable electricity in the stadium as the Crows’ faithful sensed that an upset could be in the offing. Recent articles have suggested that the home ground advantage ultimately lies in the umpires being subliminally affected by the crowd — with the end result being more calls going the home team’s way. I didn’t really notice this imbalance in umpiring decisions, but it did seem that the crowd was able to juice the Crows, pull them back when they were in danger of losing momentum and sustain them when they were on a roll. The 19th man advantage seems palpable. All the more reason, by the way, for all finals matches for which the Cats win home ground advantage to be played at Kardinia. It won’t happen because of the money, but the Cat leadership should work towards this goal.
The bye this week seems to come at an opportune time for the Cats, as also mentioned by Chris Scott. Time to take stock, regroup and get prepared for the last two home-and-away matches and the finals beyond.
I guess I’m not as disappointed in the result of the Crows match as I am a bit more nervous now in the run up to the finals. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. And ultimately, the Catters’ hanging on to the match under pressure could prove to be good training, a good test for when the pressure comes, as it surely will, from the top sides. Even though the match shouldn’t ever have been as close as it was, it was exciting and exhilarating when the Cats ended up on top at the siren.
In America from the late 80’s there was a series of advertisements asking sporting stars what they were going to do after winning a big match. Their answer: “I’m going to Disneyland (or Disney World)!” In my stomach, if not in my brain, the victory against the Crows felt like a big win. So what did I do after my sleepless night?
That’s right: to celebrate the Cats’ victory, I took my boy — a J-Pod fan who actually knows how to pronounce J-Pod’s last name in its proper Polish — to Disneyland.
Let’s hope there’ll be more trips to Disneyland in the next couple of months.
Cats and Minnie Mouse.
