GEELONG may have baulked at comparisons with James Podsiadly, but they will inevitably be made after the Cats last night went for another mature-age recruit, this time Orren Stephenson.

Stephenson, 29, from Ballarat will add to the Cats depth in the ruck following the retirements of both Brad Ottens and Mark Blake.

The Cats have kept [...]

KEY: (a) adaptable, multi-position player; (v) players who turns 28 or older in the next 12 months

The story so far….

In: Jed Bews (father/son)

Out: Mark Blake, Marcus Drum, Cameron Ling, Darren Milburn, Cameron Mooney, Brad Ottens, Ben Johnson (rookie), Jack Weston (rookie).

GEELONG ruckman Nathan Vardy has escaped a second round of surgery on his hip.

The 20-year-old had his breakout season cut short in August after the Cats decided to send him to Tasmania to be operated on by the hip specialist who helped fix Steve Johnson’s problem in 2009.

He was due to have follow-up surgery a [...]

IS IT possible to argue that this modern-day Geelong team is the greatest of all?

As the pre-season dawns and the 2011 season fades, let’s take one last look at Geelong’s achievements before we immerse ourselves in the year that will be.

With the Cats’ premiership victory against Collingwood on the first day of October, Geelong ended [...]

Former Essendon coach Matthew Knights will guide Geelong’s VFL team in 2012 after accepting the role with the Cats.

Knights has coached at AFL, VFL and SANFL level. He led Essendon for three seasons after stints with Bendigo and Port Adelaide Magpies. Knights led the Bombers to the finals in 2009 and was responsible for giving [...]

GEELONG premiership ruckman Trent West has declared he wants to remain a Cat in a major boost to the club’s ruck plans.

The Cats are intent on keeping their youngsters at the club, including emerging backman Tom Gillies in the face of a surprise trade request to Hawthorn.

Gillies is contracted for another season, meaning Geelong is [...]

GEELONG veterans David Wojcinski and Brad Ottens look set to defy expectations and play on for another season with Wojcinski having already come to terms with the Cats for a third one-year deal.

With Ottens also being encouraged to continue for 2012, the reigning premier appears determined to stick to its resolve to handle the gradual [...]

IT’S a question many football fans would have been entitled to ask themselves while watching their team lose to Geelong this year: How did Tom Lonergan transform himself from a third-string forward whose life, let alone career, was almost over in 2006 to the super-reliable full-back of a team on the cusp of a premiership.

For [...]

While the game isn’t yet won and lost in a test tube, it is increasingly guided by stark numbers.

LAST weekend’s grand final provided a triumph not just for a club and its community, but also for sport. It delivered a result to the season that could not have been rationally forecast at the outset. In [...]

GEELONG defender Corey Enright has capped a great season by taking home his second club best and fairest award.

More than 1700 people packed into the Palladium on Thursday night at Melbourne’s Crown Casino for the final act in the Cats’ week-long premiership celebrations, and they gave Enright a standing ovation after he claimed the ‘Carji’ [...]

COLLINGWOOD lost only three games in 2011, but they were all to Geelong. It is a record that brooks no argument. They are Geelong, the greatest team of all.

So easily said, so very hard-won. It took renewal, some planned, some forced. Only half of yesterday’s 22 have played in all three premierships. Since the 2009 [...]

CAMERON Ling scratches his mane of red hair and pauses for a moment when asked which Cat will replace him as captain.

The 30-year-old retired yesterday, saying after the Cats clinched their third premiership in five seasons, he had ”pushed everything I possibly could out of my body”.

IT WAS April 1998 in Ennis, County Clare, in [...]

WE’VE now seen 22 premierships decided under the AFL – as opposed to VFL – banner. They have been shared around nine clubs, three of which have won three.

One of those, West Coast, won the third leg of its treble a dozen years after the second. Another, Brisbane Lions, won their three in a row. [...]

The lads have taken the piss yet again by dressing up as Ricky Nixon and the ‘St Kilda Schoolgirl’ in their Mad Monday premiership celebrations.

Matthew Scarlett has always been the clown prince at Geelong’s celebrations and raised the bar again with a Hannibal Lecter costume, in which he was wheeled out of a disabled taxi [...]

★ Geelong was the only side that didn’t have a player who played all 22 homeand-away games this season.

★ Geelong won 19 games during the H&A season, winning by an average of 50 points – the second-highest average winning margin of any side.

★ Geelong averaged the second-most inside 50s per game (60 per game), scoring [...]

ALL grand finals create heroes. The game demands it. Great grand finals create legends and stories that become the stuff of it. Yesterday’s stunning victory by Geelong over Collingwood was one of those.

The Cats upstaged Mick Malthouse’s grand finale by 38 points on a chilly October afternoon in front of a crowd that fell [...]

IN THE finals series that was Tom Hawkins’s big breakthrough, Collingwood’s small forwards were a big let-down. Hawkins probably had his first premiership handed to him on a silver platter, but his three finals this year have been the best games of his career.

I now think he can be a superstar of the competition, whereas [...]

GEELONG coach Chris Scott says he has never felt more satisfied after a victory, but admits it would be unfair for him to take too much credit as a rookie coach for yesterday’s grand final triumph against Collingwood.

Scott could not compare his premierships as a player with the Brisbane Lions to his first flag as [...]

This should be the grandest final. It matches the reigning premier against the team it deposed, the best team of the year against the best of the last five years. This is for keeps.

It is long overdue. These teams last played off in 1953. Since, they have met in nine finals, but never the finale. [...]

THE Grand Final that many hoped for has eventuated.

Geelong, winner of two of the past four premierships and star turn of three of the past four Grand Finals, will play the defending premier Collingwood.

The top two teams after 24 rounds have won the right during the finals to play in the 2011 Grand Final. [...]