AFTER the Cats barnstormed their way through last Saturday's second preliminary final, I was sitting up in the press box deep in discussion about how all of us twelve months ago had written off this magnificent team, marking them as a team at the end of their era, ready for decline.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but if you take out the 2010 season and the Cats get over the line in this weekend's Grand Final, it is one of the greatest eras for any club in the history of our game.

Let's look at 2010, just for a second, in isolation.

The two things that every club needs working in sync are the dynamics and mechanics of their football club. Without both you will never achieve the ultimate success.  Clearly now, as we look back at last season, the Cats only had 50 per cent of this equation working for them, which is never enough in an uncompromising competition and can quite easily make you appear well off the pace.

DYNAMICS
After a tough but historic victory in the 2009 AFL Grand Final, we all wondered whether this Geelong team still had the hunger to win the back-to-back flags that they let go in 2008. Their list was starting to age but the Cats still had champions on every line. Reality suggested that if the hunger was there, the group could go on and become the first team since the Brisbane Lions in 2003 to win consecutive titles.

It wasn't long into the season when the first cracks in the group dynamic started to appear with the constant speculation that superstar Brownlow medallist Gary Ablett had either signed or was going to sign with the new Gold Coast franchise. Players denied it had an impact but there wasn't a day go by that questions weren't asked, which must have made it incredibly difficult to focus on the week-to-week tasks.

Once the relationship between the senior coach Mark Thompson and his star player started to turn sour, the group dynamic took another big hit. Body language was not great and statements from the coach - such as when Thompson said he couldn't understand why anyone would leave for money or when he praised Joel Selwood for his selfless act in re-signing with the Cats - suggesting it was always going to end in tears.

Blasted out of last year's finals campaign, I think all of us placed too much emphasis on it being the end of an era because of the age of the list, rather than concentrating on the group dynamic.

Very soon after this loss, Gary Ablett announced his departure and not long afterwards came the shock that premiership coach Mark Thompson was also going to leave. We all saw this as being devastating for the club and the final nail in the coffin.

None of us read this correctly as these departures were the biggest catalyst for the group dynamics to regain the steel and determination to drive this team forward. With a mature group of classy premiership players, there was no way they were going to be seen as a one man band who were doomed for failure without Ablett.

Equally, their leadership group was determined to show that they drove the culture of the football club and that they could do so without their coach.

The decisions of Ablett and Thompson to leave reloaded the mindset of this great team and with the right group dynamic, they were ready for the greatest challenge of their lives.

MECHANICS
The mechanics of a team revolves around its on-field performance. The strength and conditioning of the team to get them ready to play along with the game-plan and structures are all critical to ensuring a team is competitive.

Over a three- to four-year period, the Cats were at the cutting edge of the new tactical innovations in the game but like anything, the opposition are working equally as hard to cut you down to size.


The overuse run and carry game-plan had won Geelong two flags as teams could not get the ball off them but in 2010, this high possession game became their Achilles heel against the emerging challengers led by Collingwood. When the Pies finally put them to the sword in last year's finals series, we all wondered if the mechanics had finally been broken down.

Enter Chris Scott, who simplified things very quickly. He straightened them up with a no-nonsense approach that he believed would better counter the forward press that was now in vogue and more particularly, would hold up under finals pressure.

Scott also challenged the senior premiership players by opening up opportunities for youngsters on the list. This had a two-fold impact: Scott found some exciting young talent and at the same time, he got an improved showing from his senior group who were determined not to let the kids steal their positions in the team.

THE RESULT
With a star-studded line-up, the result should have been more obvious to us all as it was to those inside the Geelong camp. If you have a great team and you can get both the dynamics of the group in sync while tinkering with the mechanics, results should follow. It is a proven formula but even those inside the Cats' football Department must be amazed with how driven this group has been all year.

The Cats are a team on a mission.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs