The unbeatable Geelong was almost beaten and the rampant Saints had a real scare from the Brisbane Lions.
When two plays three, as happened last Friday night, a close game would normally be expected. However, if the Cats are one of the teams involved, it becomes a bit of a shock when the game becomes really tight.
It is interesting how often a strength can also become a weakness. Whenever the Bulldogs lose, the finger is usually pointed at their lack of a big, strong forward target. Yet when they kicked a very healthy 17 goals and pushed Geelong to the wire it was their group of small mediums who did the damage.
The Geelong defence is fantastic at spoiling and rebounding off the high ball kicked into the opposition's forward 50. Often the Bulldogs did not have even one tall target, but had, instead, a mobile group of mediums based around the speed of Brad Johnson, Jason Akermanis, Daniel Giansiracusa and Adam Cooney.
Sometimes the lack of a power forward means you will fail to get the job done, but the Bulldogs' forward flexibility unsettled the normally unflappable Cats' back six.
As the match progressed the Geelong defence started to look slow, reactive and uncomfortably positioned against the Bulldogs' strength of a flexible, unpredictably positioned forward structure.
Matthew Scarlett was chasing Scott Welsh around half-forward most of the night. Harry Taylor had trouble finding a tall opponent. David Wojcinski and David Johnson were not suited to play as small full-backs against the leading Akermanis.
The Bulldogs got the Cats' defence out of its comfort zone and almost pulled off an improbable victory.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
