Legendary 12-time Melbourne Cup-winning trainer Bart Cummings had a saying that summed up how he thought big races were won.
“A good horse will win the race you train him for,” he said.
Geelong won their 10th premiership and their first for 11 years by adopting a similar philosophy to ‘The Cups King’ as they entered their 2022 campaign.
It was built off the back of a preliminary final humiliation that demanded a fresh approach was taken the following season, an eerily similar path to the one the club followed before Chris Scott’s first flag in his first season at Geelong in 2011.
Geelong planned to win the big one. Nothing else mattered. Credit:Scott McNaughton
As a senior Geelong official said, the most significant change in thinking at the club this year was that they became less worried about winning games during the season than they did about ensuring they were in good shape in September to win the premiership.
The home and away season marked the lead-up races. The finals were the Caulfield Cup and, in Cummings’ heyday, the Mackinnon Stakes. The grand final was the Melbourne Cup.
In the end the Cats won the premiership cup by the length of the Flemington straight and were only pushed against the Tigers in round 15 and in the qualifying final against Collingwood during a 16-game winning streak.
Head of medical services Harry Taylor, himself a dual-premiership player at Geelong, co-ordinated what was required and maintained discipline around the program.
Patrick Dangerfield did not play unless his reconditioning was complete, and then he didn’t play for another week.
“It was probably frustrating for Paddy and others because he was ready to go earlier than what we allowed him to,” Taylor said.
The champion midfielder played 18 games and did not play more than five consecutive games, but in the final two matches of the season he was in the top two players on the ground – his power and speed particularly evident in round 23 when coach Chris Scott said he noticed signs of vintage Dangerfield.
The oldest team with the big numbers won the flag after most wrote them off.Credit:Getty Images
By that time, Tom Atkins had gone into the midfield and the club backed in their development of young players, such as Sam De Koning, Zach Guthrie and Max Holmes who gave the team a fresh look. And the club trusted the older players as much as they asked those veterans to trust them.
“We have great control over our own training program, and that stems from his belief,” Atkins said.
Five players played every game and four players played all bar one match, with skipper Joel Selwood still struggling with the plan to lighten his load when he was managed in round four with the Cats about to face an unbeaten Brisbane Lions. The Cats won. From then on, he knew the path being set was the right one.
When Dangerfield sensed calf soreness in the warm-up before round 21 against St Kilda, he was a late withdrawal – but there was no panic to re-insert Mark Blicavs or Selwood, who were also being rested. Luke Dahlhaus, a popular figure at the club who was just outside the best 22, replaced Dangerfield.
Joel Selwood and Patrick Dangerfield.Credit:Eddie Jim
The match became the first Geelong had played without either Selwood or Dangerfield playing since Dangerfield had joined the club at the end of 2016. They needed both to win the flag, but neither were essential in round 21 with the club wanting Dangerfield to focus on himself reaching peak form right when it mattered most.
The pair started the qualifying final on the bench, together. Dangerfield began the next two matches in the middle and Selwood remained on the bench ready to have an impact.
They lost one player to injury in the finals, the desperately unlucky Holmes, with Jake Kolodjashnij overcoming a knee injury in the qualifying final to play in the preliminary final. Cameron returned from a hamstring issue right on 21 days after sending a scare through the camp.
Luck was on their side when those injuries hit, while it had not been in previous years as Brandan Parfitt and Mark O’Connor were both lost in the 2021 finals series and chronic groin problems hurt Dangerfield in 2021.
They were trained to peak on the day with enough miles in their legs to play four quarters of ruthless, hungry football with each other more important than the individual.
At quarter-time they were 35 points up, their biggest lead at the first break in a final under Scott, reversing a trend that had dogged the club in finals during the past decade. It wasn’t about just hoping for a good start. It was about having the oldest team in the game’s history prepared to deliver one, trained to the minute to perform on the biggest day of the year.
“Our medical staff this year have done a phenomenal job … my overwhelming emotion is gratitude,” Scott said.
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