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April 04, 2006
New Kings of The Jungle
On Saturday arvo did we see the end of an era & the start of a new one? In windy & sunny/wet conditions (oxymoron I know, but how can you get wet and sunburnt all in 4 hours I'll never know) Geelong completely destroyed the Brisbane Lions at Skilled Stadium and the two sides couldn't have looked further apart.
Geelong dominated the first quarter into the wind to lead by 3 goals at the first change. It was an ominous sign for the Brisbane Lions as it was a trend that continued all day.
The threatening Lion teams of the past that had bosses us repeatedly for a decade looked long gone. We were tougher at the ball, quicker through the midfield and our skills looked a lot sharper. I didn't think our skills were fantastic in the conditions. We dropped quite a few easy marks and over possessed the football at times, but next to Brisbane's they looked top class.
It was a systematic destruction of the opposition who had few good players on the day. Mal Michael is a class player and proved it, while young Sherman looked good. Meanwhile for Geelong it was a case of struggling to find a bad player. The backline was it's usual solid self with special mentions to Egan for his job on Jonathon Brown. The midfield was absolutely dominant and was the determining factor in the match and the forward line was pretty good on a tough day for marking forwards, but more goals were there for the taking. While in the ruck Kingy showed promising signs for limited game time while Blake did alright around the field, but struggled to be accountable for Charman in the 2nd quarter. A better ruckman would have punished Blake 3 times all ending in goals.
All this achieved with Ablett, Riccardi, Johnson, Wojcinski, Harley, Kingsley, Wojcinski...(the list goes on & on) out of our 22.
GEELONG: 4.3, 8.7, 12.9, 17.13 (115)
BRISBANE: 1.1, 1.3, 2.6, 5.8 (38)
GOALS – Geelong: Chapman 3, Bartel 2, Playfair 2, Ottens 2, Milburn 2, Gardiner 2, Ablett, Byrnes, Mackie, Slade. Brisbane: Bradshaw 2, McGrath, Clark, Akermanis.
INJURIES – Geelong: Brisbane: Drummond (shoulder)
CHANGES – Geelong: Nil. Brisbane: Nil.
REPORTS - Nil.
UMPIRES - McLaren, Meredith, Chamberlain
CROWD - 23,029 at Skilled Stadium
Geelongblog.com Player of the Year
In such a good performance votes are very hard to give, but I'm going to give them mainly to the midfield because that is where the game was won, so apologies to many players.
5. Jimmy Bartel
4. Joel Corey
3. Paul Chapman
2. Gary Ablett
1. Darren Milburn
Posted by Sammy D at April 4, 2006 11:07 PM