From the Archives 2007 Rampaging Cats leave Tigers licking wounds

By Michael Gleeson July 25, 2021 â€" 12.30pm

First published in The Age on May 7, 2007

Will real Cats stand up next week?

First, a word of caution: this was Geelong, and it has done this sort of thing before, so temper your excitement. For now. Second, if you follow Richmond and did not see the game, look away now. In fact look away for a very long time.

Hawkins and Varcoe celebrate with Nathlan Ablett after his goal.Credit:John Donegan

Beltings of this nature are the reason people get extremely excited by Geelong. When they are on, as they were at dusk yesterday, they are the most irresistible side in football. They look complete: fast, aggressive and imperious, and they play with dash and elan. But then they disappoint you the next week.

The truth of Geelong will lie somewhere between yesterday’s formidable performance when records were the only true opponents, and West Coast at home on Sunday.

Even by Geelong standards this was a phenomenal performance. This was in some ways football by numbers.

Steve Johnson marks strongly.Credit:John Donegan

The Cats kicked 20 goals to half-time, 35 for the match. Richmond played like it might take a month to kick as many. The records dripped from commentators’ lips with equal glee and pity. It was Richmond‘s greatest losing margin and the third-highest winning margin in Geelong‘s history. Suffice it to say that few sides have kicked as many goals nor won by as much; these are boastful or embarrassing statistics, depending on which way your colours run.

The statistics suggested much of Geelong. It could be accused of being a flat-track bully - the Graham Hick of football - beating up the fragile. Where was this aggression and run last week at home against the Kangaroos? Did the Cats require that loss to shake them into understanding the level of weekly commitment required? But it is perhaps churlish to be overly critical after such a celebration of the game yesterday.

Gary Ablett snr had routinely routed Richmond single-handedly and yesterday his sons carried the torch. Gary jnr was superb, ferretting out goals with Paul Chapman in the first term.

Dejected Richmond players after the big loss.Credit:John Donegan

Richmond, in contrast, behaved as a side that has consigned its season to history. Terry Wallace might be partly complicit in this with his mid-week meeting with Darren Gaspar - perhaps signalling to his team that he knew the time was now to worry about next year and beyond.

Was it ironic, coincidental or just sad that Richmond ceded this score and these humiliating records the week after pushing into retirement a dual All-Australian full back and the man who has held its defence together for the past decade?

The youth policy also seemed manifest in Richmond‘s structure. How else to explain captain and reigning best and fairest Kane Johnson starting the game on the bench alongside Shane Tuck, a player of bullocking strength.

Richmond’s Danny Meyer is gang tackled.Credit:John Donegan

In their stead Richmond chose Brett Deledio and Andrew Raines - two players of promise but little exposure to the centre.

Deledio had one touch to half-time and finished with six. Cameron Ling eclipsed him such that he proved being a stopper in football is not all about leg speed. Ling not only silenced Deledio but got the ball 20 times and booted three goals.

Four times in the first half, Tigers were flicked from the bodies of Geelong players in tackles in the goal square. Each moment led to a goal.

Initially Wallace chose not to put numbers behind the ball as Geelong attacked in waves. The flood is often derided for teaching young players little, which is probably true.

But they also learnt little losing by such a large measure yesterday, a point Wallace acknowledged at the six-minute mark of the second term when, after the Cats’ 12th goal, Wallace pushed a couple back. Someone had to stand Gary Ablett and Jimmy Bartel, but few seemed interested.

DETAILS

GEELONG

10.2 20.6 29.9 35.12 (222)

RICHMOND

1.1 2.7 5.9 9.11 (65)

GOALS

Geelong: Chapman 4, Mackie 4, N Ablett 4, Hawkins 4, G Ablett 3, Varcoe 3, Ling 3, S Johnson 2, Mooney 2, Ottens, Enright, D Johnson, Selwood, Bartel, Tenace.

Richmond: Hughes 3, Richardson 2, Tuck 2, White, Pettifer.

BEST

Geelong: G Ablett, Bartel, Ling, Corey, Mackie, N Ablett, Mooney.

Richmond: Richardson, Foley, Hughes, Polack, Tuck.

INJURIES

Geelong: Chapman (hamstring).

Richmond: Egan (thigh), Schulz (thigh), Simmonds (ankle), Tambling (shoulder).

UMPIRES

Avon, Kennedy, K Nicholls.

CROWD

34,584 at Telstra Dome.

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