Geelong's team. Credit: Bob Gartland Collection. Geelong continued as a member of the VFA until the end of , when a group of the stronger clubs formed a break-away competition entitled the Victorian Football League. The 30s was a period of success for the club with premierships in and Club legend, Reg Hickey was instrumental in both. Geelong had to wait until for its fourth premiership which came with an point win over Essendon.
Geelong's Premiership team. The Cats won back-to-back flags for the first time in its VFL history with a point win against Collingwood the following year. It was during this period the Club appeared unbeatable, remaining undefeated for 26 consecutive games from the ninth game of to the thirteenth game of Geelong continued to challenge for the premiership until , but it was not until that the club won its next flag with Bob Davis as coach.
Geelong continued to produce champions throughout the 70s and 80s without success. The Club went close to ending their premiership drought but finished bridesmaids in , , and under coaches Malcolm Blight and Gary Ayres. In the new millennium, under coach Mark Thompson, a wave of talented young players combined with some experienced champions.
Geelong took out the minor premiership by winning 15 of 18 games, before going on to win their third premiership. By grand final day, Geelong was in the midst of a game unbeaten run, and Collingwood posed few problems on the big day. A sixth flag came in Geelong broke its year premiership drought with an incredible point win over Port Adelaide.
Geelong claimed their second premiership in three years after coming from behind to beat St Kilda. The Cats were written off all year but stood up when it mattered to defeat Collingwood by 27 points. The league instituted the under 19 competition in before winding it up after the campaign. The VFA was the pre-eminent football competition between and the formation of the league in Proudly Sponsored By.
Indeed, with wartime travelling restrictions in full force in and Geelong did not even participate in the competition. The s, however, would be another story altogether.
By then, the club would have a new home base, Kardinia Park, and the navy and white hooped jumpers would be being donned to telling effect each Saturday by some of the most legendary names in football history.
The season represented something of a watershed, not just in the history of the Geelong Football Club, but in the development of the code of Australian football itself.
Reg Hickey, one of Geelong's and the game's greatest ever players, who had captained the Cats to their last flag in , took over from Tommy Quinn as the team's non-playing coach. He was a man with very definite ideas on how the game should be played, and although it would take a while for the players to catch up with those ideas, the eventual upshot was that Geelong managed to obtain a significant jump on the opposition, implementing and perfecting a style of play which was at once both revolutionary and effective, an all too rare combination:.
Speed and sensational ball handling were Geelong's secret weapons This Geelong team was no fluke. Reg Hickey had planned it, step by step. Geelong sides were traditionally fast. This was the answer, but it was not blind speed. Hickey carefully chose his speedsters, and then drilled them.
Every kick and every move was part of a pattern. Mobile rucks and a long striding half back line got the ball forward, and the forwards fanned out to provide a host of opportunities. Underlying these strategies, and in a sense a key to their success, was a training philosophy which verged on the modern:. Remember that you play only as well as you are fit. The three quarters player lacks the will to win. If he's finished physically he can't go on with the job when the call is greatest.
So again I say, never slack your training. Some people talk of teams going stale. Personally I don't think any team goes stale if they retain their interest to improve. It's hard to come up fighting Saturday after Saturday if you are being whipped.
To lose five or six matches on end is a 'killer'. I've been through it, and I can sympathise. But there's only one remedy. Get up with the field. The field won't come back to you. So it's back to the old grind, training, developmental work, and more training. In Hickey's first season in charge, , the Cats played intermittently well, winning 9 of their first 15 games to appear in a strong position to contest their first finals series since However, an injury to key defender John Hyde badly unsettled the team, and contributed to a horror run of 4 successive losses which effectively de-railed the Cats' season.
A key to Geelong's improvement in was the recruitment from Essendon of talented full forward George Goninon whose senior opportunities at Windy Hill had been limited owing to the presence there of the greatest full forward in the game, a certain John Coleman. Goninon's arrival proved especially timely as the Cats' primary goal kicker of the previous decade, Lindsay White, snapped his Achilles tendon in a match against South Melbourne and never played again.
Afforded greater responsibility in the wake of White's departure, Goninon's form improved, and his overall contributions to the team effort increased, as the season wore on. With 10 wins from 18 home-and-away matches, Geelong qualified for the finals in in fourth place. The Hickey 'pace and space' formula finally clicked in With experienced and highly gifted individuals like future 'Team of the Century' members Bob Davis, Fred Flanagan and Bernie Smith now at their absolute peak as footballers, Geelong had a nucleus of talent unequalled anywhere.
Goninon it was who virtually proved the difference between the combatants on second semi final day, contributing half of Geelong's 22 goals in an 82 point annihilation of Collingwood. According to future VFL chief commissioner Jack Hamilton, who was at full back for the Magpies when Goninon entered his name in the record books:.
It was the worst day I have ever had. I had handled Goninon quite easily in two matches in which we had met earlier in the season[11] and was confident of being able to subdue him again. As it turned out, George couldn't do a thing wrong and I couldn't do a thing right. Geelong had the ball on their forward line for most of the match and I had no chance of stopping some of the passes that were delivered to him.
His kicking was superb, he was credited with One of his shots went straight through the middle and the goal umpire signalled a behind! It wasn't my place to argue. Two factors combined to bolster the Cats' confidence in advance of their grand final showdown against reigning premiers Essendon, which had ended Collingwood's season with two-point victory in the preliminary final. The first was that Bomber spearhead John Coleman, the biggest superstar in the VFL, would miss the match after having been suspended by the VFL tribunal for striking Carlton's Harry Casper in the last minor round game of the year.
Coleman had averaged more than 4 goals a game in and it went without saying that, without him, the Bombers would be a significantly less troublesome opponent. The second boost to the players' confidence came from classy and irrepressible back pocket Bernie Smith being awarded the Brownlow Medal, the first Geelong player since 'Carji' Greeves, in the Medal's inaugural year of , to be so honoured.
The grand final started well for Geelong as George Goninon had a goal on the board within a minute of the opening bounce. Full of confidence, the Cats surged forward again and again, but their next half a dozen shots for goal all resulted in minor scores.
Meanwhile the Bombers, with virtually their only coherent forward foray of the term, goaled through Hutchison. Goals for Geelong late in the term through Norman and Goninon gave the Cats a 3. Perhaps predictably, Essendon proceeded to punish Geelong's waywardness during the second term, adding 5.
With the match very much in the balance the Geelong players were forced to dig deep, which they duly did to run the Bombers off their feet in a decisive third quarter. At three quarter time the Cats led by 27 points and looked home and dry, and so it ultimately proved, although not before the Bombers had received a late lift by the entry to the arena of their legendary champion 'King Dick' Reynolds.
Inspired by Reynolds, Essendon got within five points late in the final term, but Geelong was able to steady and pull away to secure an 11 point victory, George Goninon top scored with 4 goals. Whether the presence of John Coleman in the Essendon team would have made a difference to the eventual result is a tantalising question, the answer to which will necessarily vary depending on your allegiance.
Nevertheless, what cannot be denied is that Geelong under Hickey had developed into a marvellous team. Indeed, with Bernie Smith having won the Brownlow, and George Goninon, with 86 goals, having been the league's top goal kicker, the Cats had secured a prestigious treble which only Collingwood, in and , had previously accomplished.
The Cats won a tough, high standard encounter by 8 points, 8. With more or less the same group of players as in Geelong continued to dominate, and indeed to improve, the following year. Only 2 home and away matches were lost this time around, compared to 4 the previous season, and with the defence in particular displaying extraordinary impenetrability, many of the wins were achieved with redoubtable conviction.
Only twice, against Carlton in round seven and Essendon at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground in round eight, did the Cats have tallies in excess of points kicked against them. They tuned up for the finals with a In the grand final, watched by a crowd of 82,, "the Magpies pitted their courage and determination against Geelong's superior speed, skill and system, but it wasn't enough. An incident which epitomised Geelong's superiority, as well as exemplifying the team's style of play under Hickey, occurred early in the third quarter after the Magpies had started to show signs of getting back into the game:.
Highlight of the match was a third quarter dash of yards around the outer wing by Davis Geelong. Starting on the half back flank, Davis raced around the wing, bouncing the ball as he went at top speed, and leaving Collingwood players far behind. Tackled near the half forward flank, he handpassed to Worner, who passed back to Davis, and the ball eventually finished in the teeth of goal. Ah, I remember it well! I had seven or eight bounces in that run and then let fly with a running drop kick - my favourite form of disposal.
As a boy I had always dreamed of playing in a grand final at the MCG and of launching myself on an extended run downfield. The funny thing is that I recalled this dream as I was bouncing the ball and dodging my Collingwood opponents. Following this incident, Geelong went on to add 6 goals for the term to Collingwood's 2, effectively laying to rest any doubts as to where the VFL pennant was heading.
The last quarter was a cakewalk as the Cats kept Collingwood goalless as they careered to a 46 point win, Geelong's fair headed half back flanker Geoff Williams was best afield, with rover Neil Trezise, change ruckman Norm Sharp, back pocket Bernie Smith, and 5 goal full forward George Goninon also prominent. Geelong, the team whose blistering pace has given football a new meaning in the last two years, romped away from Collingwood in the League grand final on Saturday to win its second successive pennant.
To achieve this new club record, Geelong had to wear down a tenacious and aggressive Magpie side that battled on, yard by yard, with the desperation of despair. It was a triumph richly deserved by a sternly disciplined Geelong 'machine', which plays a clean exhilarating game, entirely free from dirt, spite, and the murky reprisal. It was a fitting reward, too, for a team which has been a model of consistency, and one which stepped up the tempo of the game to a pitch no rival could either excel or equal.
Geelong, if the saying can be stomached, appeared to 'have the wood' on the Magpies, having emerged victorious from each of the last five meetings between the sides. The season, however, was to see Collingwood achieve conclusive revenge, beginning with the round fourteen home and away clash at Kardinia Park.
Going into the match, which was played in conditions more suited to open air mud wrestling than football, the Cats had remained unbeaten for 26 games, spread across two seasons, a VFL record. However, "the Magpies turned Mud Larks and beat the seemingly invincible Cats If this was the first crack to appear in the Geelong armour, a potentially more injurious one appeared three weeks later when South Melbourne handed the Cats their biggest hiding for over a year, in the process making them look tired, hesitant and lacking in confidence.
Qualification for the finals was never in doubt, and indeed the side already had enough wins in the bank combined with a sufficiently hefty percentage to ensure a top place finish.
However, the sudden decline in form was as bewildering as it was alarming and badly timed. Football, like most sports, is evolutionary in nature. That is to say, the criteria for success are continually being modified and redefined. Geelong in the early s had set new standards with a fast, open, run on style of football which certain other teams had swiftly endeavoured to copy, but without ever achieving the same degrees of fluency or effectiveness.
Sides like Collingwood and Footscray, however, adopted a totally different tack; instead of 'if you can't beat them, join them', they endeavoured to counteract, stymie and undermine. Such an approach required considerably less pure football talent than the method favoured by Geelong, but it did at least possess the supreme virtues of being a easier to implement, and b much more in keeping with the traditional, hard-nosed, unspectacular Victorian ethos which held that 'good football was pressure football'.
In the second semi final, the Cats, with their confidence still perhaps impaired by their tentative performance against South Melbourne a few weeks earlier, were harassed and intimidated virtually to a stand still by a tenacious, vibrant Magpie outfit. Collingwood won Admittedly, a determined last quarter effort brought the final margin back to just 12 points, but at the end of the day there could be little doubt that the Hickey formula had finally found its measure.
Reg Hickey remained at the helm at Geelong for a further six seasons, but the club's halcyon era was well and truly over. At first, its decline was gradual - consecutive third place finishes in and , followed by a drop to fourth in - but in and the Cats experienced the indignity of their first non-wartime wooden spoons since The season brought marginal improvement - 5 wins from 18 matches, and tenth spot on the ladder - but Hickey had had enough, and opted to step down as coach.
Had he been in charge forty years later, it is doubtful if he would have been afforded this luxury. The man to whom the Geelong committee turned to resurrect the club's fortunes was, like Hickey, one of the club's most celebrated products.
Captain of both of the club's most recent premiership sides in and , Bob Davis had only retired as a player a season ago. Known as 'the Geelong Flier', or 'Woofa', he was one of the most exciting footballers of his era, and the s would see him enhance his considerable reputation still further, this time in the coaching arena.
Like his predecessor in the coaching hot seat, Bob Davis had a very clear notion on how he was going to approach the job:. I had watched other clubs during my season off and I realised that Geelong had become inbred.
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