Round 9 – Geelong v Collingwood: Shoe polish

Geelong v Collingwood

7:35pm, Saturday May 9

MCG

 

 

To the naked eye Pendles looked a bit stupid, frankly. Like one of them old, wrinkled Italian men who used too much shoe polish in their hair. It was so glairing. Did not suit him. I don’t know the man, but it didn’t sit right with my perceptions.

 

He is not a good player with great endurance, he is a great player, the One Who Stops Time when he has the ball. Who doesn’t jerk and twitch and dive, or even explode, just does, simply, while all around him dive and claw and flounder. Still, this was history. I wanted to watch it; him break Boomer’s heart. So it goes, Brent. North should have given you the few more years you were after. It would have delayed the inevitable.

 

There is always someone strong, someone faster, someone who plays longer. It takes a generation or two, but they appear, and are glorious.

 

Pendles is glorious. I sat down to watch him equal Boomer’s record.

 

To the naked eye, Grog Evens is a bit of a rough diamond. That’s because he is. An old school Otways man living in tidy Apollo Bay. He stands out a little. To me anyway. The Grog I knew back in the day lived on a farm in the Johanna Valley and loved his beer and running through people on the oval. These days he lives with his ripper wife and kids just up from a shopping strip, in a street with neighbours. His youngest and Cielo get on like a house on fire, so two Otways boofheads drank and watched Cats v Pies in his lounge while the girls had a sleepover.

 

I’ve never watched a whole game night on Fox before – hell, we don’t even own a telly – but the screen in front of us was big enough for Spielberg, Grog’s firepot was a corker, and, surely, footy was still footy.

 

The first thing I noticed was the players warmed up for an hour. Minimum. Such a big wind-up. Then, how the broadcast programmers were using AI to put glossy head shots of Scott and his game tally on everything. Buildings, cities, light towers, dunny walls, condom machines… It was almost Orwellian.

 

There were talking heads, a sea of them, polished head-to-bum-hairs, yammering. Bourbon took care of that lot. Not a word heard. Then, thank fuck, there was footy. A good, ugly, shithouse game of footy, that, to the naked eye, looked like mid-finals playing maybe-just-finals. De Goey jumped out of the gates, not brilliantly – there was none of that brilliant stuff on offer from anybody, but stats wise, sure. He did a lot of pushing it forward. Grog and I rode it out. De Goey wasn’t going to sustain that. It’s not in him. He’s a burst player, who as getting his burst out of the way early.

 

Beyond that, everything was turnovers, handballing to the opposition, fumbles, a bloody lot of them, not many good defensive marks, and no marquee names firing.

 

I blame homework and time.

 

Moore was unsighted, as was Stewart down the other end. Huston, Close (two goals aside) unsighted. Danger either too old, or very injured. He bulled the ball through packs, showing power, if not pure force of will, but only now and then, over short distances. Elliot was similarly sporadic. Cameron was unseen. Daicos-the-prettier out-and-out beaten. His man was good and tough and had a big engine and did simple, boring things, like got the ball, delivered the ball. Played tight. Kicked well, handballed. I liked him. And, no, Nick didn’t chase. Two or three times I saw him power down as Geelong streamed away from him. Little Maurice Rioli would have been disgusted! Daicos-the -young-Al-Pacino-stunt-double, the extra from Scarface, was better. He mopped up, and ran beautifully. Kicked a goal, even. Only the gold chains were missing.

 

The first half was a grind to watch. The commentators kept waxing lyrical about this player and that, and not looking at the bigger picture. Geelong are front runners. Bar one wing and Cameron, they all run forward of the ball, so just need to win through the middle. Collingwood are built around they backline. But it was lacking glue, even before Moore took some sleep time. With Steele waiting out this game in a retirement home, and McBull-in-a-China shop mostly forward, the Pies had no back-launching peripheral run. The stillness, and straightness of their game was both predictable to Geelong, and, to Grog and I, boring.

 

The main thing I noticed, was, to the naked eye, Bailey Smith was exactly the player I think he is. A barometer, rather than a matchwinner. First half, nowhere. But as Collingwood’s lack of class, and age of bodies began to show, Bailey started to shine. He was the link in everything throughout the second half, once the game was well and truly over. Finished with 40 touches, the fancy graphics told us. Almost all of them irrelevant, wallpaper.

 

Holmes is exciting. He can tear a game up, or not. Bailey is needed. Back in the day Williams had Bradley, Buckley had Bruns and Licuria. But, yeah, Bailey only finishes.

 

In the second half Geelong cut them up and pulled away from all this mediocracy due to their suicide handball. Those crazy flicks to blokes 8/9ths hot reminded me so much of the Geelong of ’07, ‘09, ’11, the game reminded me of that whole point in time. Roos and Woosha had been strangling the game, winning dour, scrappy flags. Geelong broke their zones by not giving a shit, just going loopy, at manic speed, through the corridor. Zip, pow, bam, take off backs! Keep possession? Who cares! Whoops, we’re free forward of centre! They changed the game, until Hawthorn invented the rolling zone and changed it again.

 

The first half was shite. The second half had moments thanks to those handballs. Mostly Geelong moments, but whatever.

 

All that was left to do was admire Ollie Henry for being the only player to put in four quarters, and for seeming so likeable, and for adding salt by being ex-Collingwood.

 

And to pontificate about Pendles.

 

Every single thing about him seems likeable. But everything about how Collingwood and the League are going about his record-breaking next week bugs me. He too, seems to have become a barometer player. When the Pies are not, he is no longer standing tall. When they are thumping the game and running forward, he is still everywhere. That happens. I am a fan, and always have been and always will be. But resting him when he doesn’t need to be rested, so he came play against the Eagles, in a good game for barometers, at home, is bullshit.

 

Sorry; bullshit.

 

The first thing they teach you, ever, always, game one until retirement, is; team before individual. Yet the way the Pies are going about it is the polar opposite. Next week, they have players down, quality is low, with Moore out, leadership will be lacking, they are swimming against tides to make top four and are playing the flag favourites. All soldiers report for duty! All hands needed!

 

Not playing away games might, maybe, just, mean something if they were playing Exmouth, or Broome, or in the NT somewhere, but Sydney? I’ve done farts longer than the flight up there.

 

It’s wrong.

 

The game isn’t about marketing, or even the revenue of a home game celebration. It’s about the uneven fall of an oval ball.

 

If the League couldn’t even have the bloody humanity to give Fitzroy a fucking home match for their last game in existence, Collingwood can play their better players when they are needed!

 

Haha, that sounded like venting! Fitzroy forever!

 

I enjoyed drinking with Grog. Having the sound of our girls being cheeky and having a ball as our soundtrack. Elena and I live remote. It was a crazy great for our little tacker! Us two Otways boys talked all sorts of shit, drinking to kill time until the siren killed the game that had already been dead for 50 minutes. That part was gravy.

 

Grog barracks for Geelong, so at least one of us had interest beyond the simplicity of football. All that was left was to nut out the best players.

 

Smith, who got 40 touches, was not in them.

 

I recently got into an online argument about Max Gawn. The other bloke, and many like him, I thought, were caught up in the glory and hype of MAX! Scoffing at the very idea that he might not be All-Australian this year. I pointed out that not only did Grundy beat him decisively a week ago, but Brody has been the better ruckman for a good year-and-a-half. The AA team is as much about PR and reputation, as it is worthiness. SOS was a legend, but still got the AA nod when he had a few very average years, and Zanotti was killing it. Max is still a force, and one of the all-time greats! The best ruck of his generation. But not of this moment.

 

The bloke I was disagreeing with posted a stats sheet of the Sydney/Melbourne game, thus rendering him 100% irrelevant. Not worth engaging.

 

To! The! Naked! Eye! Grundy spanked him.

 

To the naked eye, Henry was BOG, the only four quarter man out there.

 

And Stewart played his 200^th, and remains a humble man I would give my eye tooth to have a simple beer with.

 

While our kids played, naturally.

 

 

GEELONG                   5.3     7.6     11.10     18.14     (122)
COLLINGWOOD     3.4     5.8     5.14     9.14     (68)

 

GOALS
Geelong: O.Henry 4, Mannagh 3, Close, Martin, Dangerfield, Neale 2, Dempsey, Cameron, Bowes
Collingwood: McStay 3, Buller 2, J.Daicos, Pendlebury, Schultz, Anderson

 

BEST
Geelong: Smith, Holmes, Mullin, Dempsey, Neale, O.Henry
Collingwood: De Goey, Crisp, Pendlebury, J.Daicos, N.Daicos, McStay

 

 

 

More from Old Dog HERE.

 

 

 

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