Given Chris Scott’s famous reluctance to talk anything tactically in public, even the slightest bread crumb can reveal plenty.
In the minutes before Geelong took on Brisbane in the Qualifying Final three weeks ago, Scott was in the middle of a pre-match interview with Channel 7 when he was asked what the Cats had learned from previous meetings with the Lions.
His response: “We have learned a bit in terms of the way we played against them … and we just didn’t test them at all (in the last match). Our aim is to test them tonight.”
How Geelong ended up testing Brisbane, with an ultra-aggressive plan that was arguably the best performance by any team so far this year, gives us plenty to work with when looking forward to the decider.
Geelong already had a relatively high press, but it went to another level in the Qualifying Final.
It was a direct response to Brisbane’s ball use slicing through their defence in previous meetings, often via the corridor.
No team kicks it short more often than the Lions, ranking 1st in the league as a percentage of their total. It’s the short kicking which often finds gaps in the back half, working through soft spots in opposition defensive zones before moving quickly once they get find a crease.
For a detailed look at how Brisbane do it, their 2025 Finals Dossier
Because of the slant towards short kicks over long, Geelong opted to take their defensive high press and ratchet it up even further, pinning Brisbane into an ever-smaller space.
In a way it was a risky decision. If the press wasn’t executed optimally, it would have left acres of space – either between the two layers of defence, or over the back of the deepest layer depending on positioning – if Brisbane hit the first target or two in the possession chain.
Right from the outset here, in this freeze frame we can see 12 Cats within about 35 to 40 metres of the ball. It’s two more numbers than the 10 Lions in shot. If Zorko had hit the target, there were spare teammates out wider on the near wing, a direct result of Geelong’s defensive choices. High risk, high reward.
But the vanishing space meant a turnover and Geelong’s first goal of the night.
In the home and away season, Brisbane ranked third for turning rebound 50s to inside 50s and top five for fewest opposition scores from those rebound 50s. In simple terms they were able to safely rebound without handing the ball straight back and also turn it into attacking opportunities.
Not so against Geelong:
| Brisbane’s rebound 50s, QF | Turned into inside 50s | Turnover & Geelong score |
| 38 | 7 | 7 |
Again, and again, and again, Geelong positioned themselves in the most aggressive areas and dared Brisbane to go through where Cats were.
Again, and again, and again, Brisbane couldn’t:
It was how Geelong stopped Brisbane’s formidable ball movement, turning it into a mish mash of turnovers, confused patterns, and more handballing than normal.
Elsewhere, namely on-ball, the successful Oisin Mullin tag on Hugh McCluggage had a domino effect for both teams’ rotations.
If we can put most of McCluggage’s skills to one side for a second, the most important part of his game when it comes to the Geelong matchup is his running ability. He’s comfortably Brisbane’s best midfield runner, consistently in threatening areas all over the ground whether in possession or not.
Mullin’s job was specifically to eliminate that running and link up play from Brisbane’s arsenal, and he succeeded mightily in limiting McCluggage to just seven uncontested possessions. To find the last game McCluggage had a lower total, we have to go all the way back to Round 2, 2018 v Melbourne. And that’s including the covid year.
With McCluggage basically a non-factor, it allowed Geelong’s main midfield trio – Tom Atkins, Bailey Smith, and Max Holmes – to exploit their advantages over Brisbane’s.
For a detailed look at Geelong’s midfield mix, their 2025 Finals Dossier
Smith and Holmes’ running power is far too much for most midfields to handle at their peak, let alone one suffering from its best runner (McCluggage) kept quiet, another on-baller underdone (Lachie Neale), and another whose long list of strengths are in other areas of the game (Josh Dunkley).
So as Geelong’s trio went to work, it meant they got prime value from their contest and clearance wins, backing it up with offensive aggression from support acts. Geelong scored 50 points from 38 clearances, a hugely efficient rate that could have been even more if not for inaccuracy.
Those 50 points didn’t come from kicking 8.2, but rather 7.8. 15 scoring shots from 38 clearances meant a scoring rate of 39.5 percent. To put it into perspective, here’s the top five teams at scoring rate from clearances in the home and away season, followed by Geelong’s Qualifying Final mark:
| AFL rank (H&A season) | Team | Scoring rate from clearances |
| 5th | Hawthorn | 25.6% |
| 4th | Gold Coast | 26.4% |
| 3rd | GWS | 26.9% |
| 2nd | Geelong | 27.8% |
| 1st | Bulldogs | 30.1% |
| Qualifying Final | Geelong | 39.5% |
Pretty impressive!
Combine Geelong’s ability to get the most out of their contest and clearance wins with how their defence was able to stop Brisbane moving the ball with any fluency, and we’re left with what we saw unfold three weeks ago.
It wasn’t as if Brisbane played poorly either. Post-match, Chris Fagan’s press conference went for seven and a half minutes. In that time, Fagan brought up variations of how ‘Geelong were very good/their pressure was excellent’ on nine – nine – separate occasions. Sometimes a team is just unstoppable on the day.
But with three weeks to mull on what happened, albeit with several injuries and sore players piling up since, Saturday provides an opportunity for the ultimate redemption.
From Brisbane’s point of view, the Grand Final likely comes down to one of two choices:
1) Do we back ourselves to execute better than the Qualifying Final, thwarting Geelong’s press and on-ball dominance?
2) Do we make minor tweaks and force Geelong to answer different questions?
Either way, expecting any drastic change would likely be a waste of breath. It’s not exactly 1997 when Shane Ellen can swing forward to kick five.
Choice two looms as the intriguing one. There are levers Brisbane can pull to present Geelong with different looks. At time of writing it appears Neale will be the starting sub rather than in the 22, which allows more on-ball time for the likes of Cam Rayner and Zac Bailey, along with perhaps more on-ball time for Levi Ashcroft while keeping him away from the Ollie Dempsey wing matchup. A Bruce Reville tag on Dempsey would be a clever move.
As mentioned earlier, Geelong’s tag on McCluggage took out Brisbane’s best midfield runner and allowed Atkins, Smith, and Holmes to play their respective roles relatively unencumbered. Different looks on-ball changes that equation.
Elsewhere, if there is faith aerially in the three tall forwards – Oscar McInerney, Ty Gallop, and Logan Morris – an option is to favour long kicking just a little bit more to stretch the defence and create a game played in larger areas.
It doesn’t have to be long bombs down the line at every possible opportunity but rather establishing the willingness to take distance, forcing Geelong’s defence to think about covering more ground than the Qualifying Final.
We often hear about ‘perceived pressure’ all the time, but in this case it’s more about ‘perceived threat’. As long as the opposition defence thinks something’s a realistic chance to happen, it’s half the battle. Whether it does happen is almost secondary.
From Geelong’s point of view, they rarely go into a game content to simply run it back, so they’ll also make tweaks.
On the surface, with Rhys Stanley’s return in the ruck, the most obvious shift seems to be Mark Blicavs shifting to the third tall forward he played in the latter stages of the home and away season. It’ll also double as a defensive role on Harris Andrews. Playing Blicavs back with all of Jack Henry, Connor O’Sullivan, and Sam De Koning feels imbalanced, even allowing for Blicavs’ ability to do anything and everything.
Elsewhere the changes will likely be subtle and tricker to spot on first glance, but the big wildcard is what happens now Geelong’s element of surprise from the Qualifying Final is gone.
Much like Chris Scott’s off-hand comment on the night revealed plenty, so too did Josh Dunkley’s comment on Friday, referencing the loss three weeks ago:
“They showed us a few things we weren’t thinking about … we’ve put some things in place to try and stop that and get it going our way.”
Whether those things Brisbane put in place are enough to overcome a bruising run in, along with an opposition unbelievably well primed and ready to go as the best team this year, only time will tell.
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