Cats Do It The Old Way While Saints Chase Ghosts Down At GMHBA

Down at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday the Cats did what Cats have done to St Kilda for about thirty years now, which is win the contest that mattered and let the Saints win the highlights reel. I’ll admit I only half watched it with one eye on the cricket, but even a half-watch tells you plenty about the state of this competition in 2026.

Geelong got the job done, St Kilda had their period in the second term where the Moorabbin faithful — or what’s left of them after they shifted most home games elsewhere, don’t get me started — thought they were a real show, and then the older, wiser, more disciplined outfit reasserted itself. Same story it’s been since I was young enough to stand on the terraces at Princes Park, back when we actually had terraces and you could get a park within cooee of the ground.

The Cats Do It The Way We Used To

Say what you like about Geelong — and around Carlton people say plenty, most of it fair — but they still play a version of the game my old man would recognise. Contested footy through the middle, a target up forward who leads at the right time, and defenders who actually defend rather than just running back through the corridor because some laptop somewhere told them the numbers like it. In this modern competition full of interchange rotations and coaches talking about ‘gameplan’ like it’s some kind of religious document, Geelong at least still looks like a footy team playing footy.

They controlled the clearances, they made St Kilda work for every inch on the outer wing, and when the Saints threatened to make a real fist of it Geelong just did what good sides have always done — steadied, took the sting out of it, and ground the margin back out in the last term. That’s not exciting for the neutral, I grant you, but it’s effective, and there was a time when effective was all a coach cared about, before everyone got so obsessed with entertainment value and free-flowing footy for the broadcast deal.

St Kilda’s Same Old Story

The Saints will look at this one and wonder how they let it slip, and fair enough too, because for a good chunk of the afternoon they were the better side through the corridor. But that’s been the St Kilda story for longer than I care to remember — flashes of real quality, a period where you think they might finally be building something, and then the same soft underbelly when the game gets tight and physical in the last quarter. I’ve seen this movie before. I saw it in the eighties, I saw it in the nineties, I saw it about four years ago when they had that finals win everyone got excited about, and here we are again.

It’s not a talent issue with this St Kilda group, in my view — they’ve got some genuine quality through the midfield brigade and a forward line that can hurt you on its day. It’s more that when the game turns into an arm wrestle, when it’s about who wants it more at the coalface, they still come off second best against the competition’s more experienced units. That’s a temperament thing as much as anything, and temperament doesn’t get fixed by a new fitness program or another rookie draft pick, it gets fixed by blokes who’ve been through the fire enough times to trust each other when it’s tight.

Umpiring Yet Again A Talking Point

I won’t pretend I didn’t grumble at a couple of free kick decisions during this one, because I did, loudly enough that the neighbours probably heard me through the fence. There was a holding-the-ball call in the third quarter that had commentators shaking their heads, and you could argue all day about whether the tackler had control or whether the bloke in possession had genuine opportunity to dispose. I’m not saying anyone was cheated, I’m saying the modern interpretation of that rule changes more often than the Melbourne weather, and every time head office tinkers with it we get another Saturday of blokes at the ground turning to each other going ‘since when is that holding the ball.’

Back in my day — and I know how that sounds, but bear with an old bloke — you knew what holding the ball was. You knew what deliberate out of bounds was. The rules didn’t get workshopped every summer by some committee trying to make the game more ‘watchable’ for people who don’t actually understand it. Every year it’s something new, and every year the players and the umpires alike look like they’re still catching up by about Round 12.

What This Means Down The Ladder

For Geelong this is exactly the sort of unspectacular four points that finals contenders bank in the guts of a season, the kind of win nobody remembers by September but that keeps the percentage healthy and the confidence ticking along nicely. They’ll take it, file it away, and get on with the job, because that’s what good clubs with good cultures do — they don’t need every win to be a statement, they just need the points.

For St Kilda it’s another one of those results that leaves their fans wondering exactly where the ceiling is on this group. There’s talent there, there’s genuine improvement compared to a few years back, but there’s still that gap between them and the top four sides that showed up again on Saturday afternoon. Whether that gap closes before finals time is anyone’s guess, and I wouldn’t put money on it myself, though I’ve been wrong about St Kilda before and I’ll probably be wrong again.

The Old Man’s Verdict

None of this affects Carlton directly, obviously, though you can bet our list management types will be watching how Geelong structures its forward line and taking note, because whatever else you say about that club they keep finding a way to stay relevant year after year while other proud old outfits — mine included at various miserable points over the last few decades — have gone through the wringer. There’s a lesson in that about patience and list-building that half the competition still hasn’t learned, and I doubt they ever will while everyone’s chasing the quick fix instead of building it properly like they used to in the old VFL days.

Anyway, that’s my two bob’s worth. Geelong get the four points, St Kilda get another lesson, and the rest of us get on with the season none the wiser about whether this rule tinkering is ever going to stop. Somehow I doubt it, but stranger things have happened — like Carlton actually winning a flag, which I’m still hoping to see again before they carry me out feet first.