They meet finally. They, the 2 footballing titans of the Twenty first century, have navigated their diverging paths to reach at the moment with flags sharpened for the planting.
It is a grand last 25 years within the making, a bid to say possession not solely of the 2025 season however of a complete quarter-century. Different golf equipment have constructed formidable sides which have conquered after which succumbed, however Geelong and Brisbane have continued.
For each the Cats and Lions, at the moment marks their seventh grand last look this facet of the millennium. Considered one of them will develop into the primary membership to say 5 premierships in that span.
Solely one of many final six grand finals didn’t function Geelong or Brisbane. On the last siren this afternoon, 9 out of the 26 grand finals this century can have been received by both Geelong or Brisbane — each three seasons, principally, one in all these mobs goes to win the flag.
How the unpredictable Cats baffled opponents on their technique to the grand last
These are outstanding figures in a league that heralds its equalisation strategies. In spite of everything, we’ve a wage cap and a draft system in place to forestall the very sort of dominance we’re witnessing at the moment.
Attaining longevity has meant circumventing all that, defying footballing gravity, and Geelong and Brisbane have performed it in fully alternative ways.
Brisbane’s reign will be cut up into two distinct eras with a lean decade in between, whereas the Cats, extremely, started floating greater than 20 years in the past and have merely by no means come down.
These misplaced years allowed the Lions to construct the core of this present squad by way of the draft, each by nailing most of its excessive draft picks and plucking out neglected diamonds with later choices.
Think about Harris Andrews with choose 61 in 2014. Jarrod Berry, Zac Bailey and Brandon Starcevich all with picks within the teenagers in 2016 and 2017. Logan Morris, solely two years in the past, a second-night draft choice at choose 31. The impressed double-act of Darcy Wilmot and Kai Lohmann at 16 and 20 in 2021.
Brisbane has been in premiership competition yearly since 2019. (AAP: Joel Carrett)
Across the children, you commerce in expertise. When Greg Swann, paradoxically, went to the AFL and requested a precedence choose in 2016, the Lions brilliantly turned it right into a commerce for Charlie Cameron 12 months later.
Lachie Neale arrived from Fremantle and exceeded all expectations, whereas the addition of Josh Dunkley has been impressed. That there, the Lions will say, is the blueprint for any struggling membership.
What most different golf equipment cannot replicate, although, is hanging gold within the father-son stakes, with Will Ashcroft, Levi Ashcroft and Jaspa Fletcher arriving for cents on the greenback as fully-formed AFL stars. Or entry to a thriving academy which has offered them Eric Hipwood, Sam Marshall and Ty Gallop amongst others.
Victims of their very own success, the Cats have needed to construct and rebuild their record by way of alternate strategies.
Of the 23 gamers named for at the moment’s grand last, seven started their careers on the rookie record. One other two have been Gaelic footballers in Eire earlier than they’d even heard of Geelong.
The addition of Jeremy Cameron extended Geelong’s premiership window. (Getty Photos: Dylan Burns/AFL Images)
Tom Stewart and Shaun Mannagh have been neglected for years earlier than the Cats took them as mature-aged recruits. With the second-last choose of the 2023 draft, Lawson Humphries was taken out of Swan Districts’ WAFL reserves group.
Geelong’s means to fill particular however useful roles with low-cost and low-profile gamers has allowed it to push the boat out for the cream on high.
Say what you need concerning the alleged flexibility of Geelong’s wage cap, and folks eternally will, but it surely’s rather a lot simpler to pay Jeremy Cameron and Bailey Smith when you may reliably pluck a bricklayer out of the GFL second division and get 20 AFL video games a 12 months out of him.
The frequent floor between these golf equipment, and the rationale their rivals ought to brace for a few years of dominance but, is how they will now promote themselves to free brokers and commerce targets.
Come to us, the Cats and Lions can say, and we are going to give you the prospect to play massive finals and compete for premierships virtually yearly. Come to us and set your loved ones up effectively away from the probing, relentless Melbourne bubble.
Come to us and relish a tradition of success with leaders on each line and assist workers who can heal your persistent accidents. Come to us and bathe within the Queensland solar or take within the serenity of sleepy south-west Victoria.
It is proving a compelling pitch. Charlie Curnow has been bought on the Geelong dream, whereas Brisbane must make room for each Oscar Allen and Sam Draper subsequent 12 months.
The Lions even have Dan Annable, a transparent top-five prospect on this 12 months’s draft, able to be extracted from the academy and positioned proper alongside the remainder of Brisbane’s elite crop of children in 2026.
Brisbane and Geelong have not simply stumbled into this place blindly. It has taken years of cautious planning and the overcoming of great odds.
After they enter the MCG this afternoon, these groups are nonetheless in some way nearer to the start of their journeys than the top. A premiership at the moment will additional underline, however not at all put a full cease on, their logic-defying greatness.
