THE FEARED Geelong midfield combination of Joel Selwood and Patrick Dangerfield attended just 29 per cent of centre bounces together in the Cats' loss to the Giants, down from 41 per cent in the triumph over the Hawks.
To illustrate this further, in the second quarter they did not attend a centre bounce together at all and the Cats struggled, winning just two of 10 centre clearances.
During a 15-minute period in that quarter the Giants kicked five goals to the Cats' one and won six consecutive centre clearances.
Geelong lost that term by 13 points – the eventual final margin.
The Giants' dominated an area that the Cats seemed to own on Easter Monday.
Football's feared one-two punch each spent time forward, while the other went into the centre bounce alone as the Cats tried to capitalise on their first-quarter dominance that saw them win the inside 50 count 14-11 yet trail by two points on the scoreboard.
For 13 successive centre bounces if one was present for a centre bounce the other was absent.
On Wednesday, Cats coach Chris Scott said it was a coincidence rather than a plan and quite reasonably pointed out that the Cats weren't dependent on those two players.
After all, Mark Blicavs, Mitch Duncan and Josh Caddy all spent time inside the square and the Cats know the best teams – a la Hawthorn – vary their centre square set-ups all the time.
And the Giants' dominance at stoppages wasn't restricted to just the centre square. They scored 9.4 (58) from stoppages during the game.
"It's going to happen at times. At other times we'd absolutely like them in there together but we don't think that we're dependent on either one of those individuals," Scott said.
"We're a bit deeper in the midfield than we have been previously and we intend to use that. We don't think to succeed we need those two in there together."
Given it wasn't a plan, it might be an indication of the time it takes teams to gel when new players are introduced.
The next time the Cats lose six successive centre bounces in a row, football's dynamic duo should reconvene for a centre bounce quickly.
On Sunday, Dangerfield and Selwood did not re-unite in the centre until the 14-minute mark of the third quarter when the Giants led by 31 points and the game was out of reach.
They were together in six of the remaining 11 centre bounces and the Cats won five clearances (three to Selwood, one to Dangerfield, one to Rhys Stanley) and neutralised one clearance as Geelong fought back to get the margin back to five points.
Admittedly, the duo can't do everything and Selwood was expected to play forward at times given his limited pre-season and the restricted rotations.
But when the chips are down this season at the Cats, that duo needs to be in the heart of the action as often as possible.
Stats supplied by Champion Data
