The Cats gambled on Rhys Stanley. It didn’t work. Now it’s time they holler for a Marshall

Brisbane are back-to-back premiers after storming home against Geelong.See all 17 stories .

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The Rhys Stanley gamble at selection plainly did not work. It is not where the game was lost for Geelong, but it was a clear weakness all day for the Cats.

Stanley coming back into the team after Mark Blicavs played well as a mobile ruckman for the first two finals plainly didn’t pay off. Stanley was poor. Blicavs had little influence.

The game alone did not point to why the Cats should try to secure a new ruckman, such as Rowan Marshall, for they were already pursuing the St Kilda ruckman. But this game provided the evidence for the Cats to redouble their interest.

The ruck has long been a tender spot for the Cats. They have known it and they have tried myriad solutions. The difficulty of a Marshall trade has been the Saints have hitherto believed they will be able to make it work with Marshall and incoming ruckman Tom De Koning.

While the view the Saints will hold onto their contracted ruckman has softened, the expectation is that, if they do entertain a trade, their first preference will be to receive a proven player in return for Marshall. That makes a deal more difficult. The more obvious outcome would be for the Saints to ask for a future pick as next year’s draft is commonly thought to have a stronger field of talent than this year’s.

The grand final loss creates a difficulty in assessing Geelong’s needs and proximity to a flag. The same line-up, with the inclusion of Tom Stewart, belted Brisbane in the qualifying final. That suggests a team that is not a long way off the premiers. Saturday would say they are, and that Brisbane’s list and likely inclusions will see that gap widen.

James Worpel will likely come to the Cats from Hawthorn. He is a good inside midfielder, so his inclusion should help release Max Holmes and Bailey Smith, but he is also a B grader. He is not a talent who will transform a list.

At the same time, Brisbane will add another prized talent from their academy to their list – Daniel Annable, who will be bid on very early in this year’s draft. Yes, that will lead to hand-wringing about the premier being able to add top-end draft talent in a year they won the premiership, just as they added the Ashcrofts and Jaspa Fletcher as father-son selections in recent years while finishing at or near the top. But that is a separate discussion.

Annable is an elite talent who, in any other team, would be considered ready to step straight into the midfield next year at AFL level. But, at the Lions he will have to find a place in the queue of an already deep premiership midfield.

Geelong, as the key rival to the Lions, has to consider where they find improvement on their list commensurate to what Brisbane is adding. This is also a Brisbane team with eight players – some of them their best players – aged under 22, so not yet even ripe in football terms.

There is more scope for the Lions to improve organically before they even add Annable, or Sam Draper from Essendon or Oscar Allen from West Coast.

Geelong doesn’t have that sort of profile. They have young talent, but it’s not on a par with Brisbane’s.

Max Holmes would be a star in any team and was their best player on Saturday. Jyhe Clarke, although he was beaten on the day, showed more in the first half than he has shown to date. Shannon Neale had a grand final to forget. Connor O’Sullivan is capable. Shaun Mannagh is a good player and, like Lawson Humphries who was good on Saturday, both are canny draft choices. The great hope of Toby Conway has been thwarted by injury. And Oliver Henry can’t get in the team.

Marshall would significantly improve them, primarily because he releases Blicavs back into his most dangerous role of everywhere-man on the ball and behind it. Worpel would help, but not as much as Bailey Smith would help them if he improved his kicking.

How close are the Cats then? They won 17 games, won two finals easily and lost a grand final which was never on their terms.

Will finds a way

This was Will Ashcroft’s Norm Smith Medal, but it might not have been. That is not to imply he was undeserving – he was a justifiable winner, as he was last year. But this year’s medal, more so than most grand finals, could have ended up hanging around any one of half a dozen other necks.

Hugh McCluggage? He provided redemptive story after a modest 14 touches in the qualifying final against Geelong enhanced the view that restricting him was the key to stopping the Lions. Two opponents, 26 touches, five clearances, four goals and four more score assists neatly precis his excellent game on Saturday.

Charlie Cameron kicked four goals that opened the game up. When no one else could kick a goal – hello, Zac Bailey – Charlie could. His interventions were few, but they were meaningful. He kicked his goals when goals were at a premium and when the Lions eventually opened their gap on Geelong.

Can you win any AFL medal, let alone a Norm Smith Medal, when you are a defender? Poor Harris Andrews, there was no more consequential a player on the ground. But, playing at full-back, he was up against it.

Jaspa Fletcher may spend his career in the shadows of the blond bouffants of the Ashcroft brothers. But Luke Hodge, voting in the Norm Smith Medal, figured him best on the ground. That might have been generous, but Fletcher did have support from the rest of the panel, and he would not have been an undeserving winner.

Zac Bailey had a head-scratching game. Can you be the best player when you kick so badly? He was in Arnold Breidis territory (0.7 in the 1977 grand final) with his first quarter alone. He atoned for his inaccuracy later, finishing the game with 3.6. He was creative and helpful up around the ball, so he was not strictly a small forward. But for mine, you can’t be best on ground when you miss so many.

Lachie Neale posed the question of whether you can be the best player on the ground when you only play half the game? A game that was level at half-time turned Brisbane’s way when Neale was injected. It was cause not coincidence that the midfield balance completely shifted in the Lions’ favour once Neale came on. He finished with seven clearances – the second most on the ground, even though he spent half the game wearing a subs vest.

Geelong deployed two taggers or defensive midfielders – Tom Atkins and Oisin Mullin – neither of whom were especially effective. Playing both of them on the ball meant that all creativity and offensive drive for Geelong had to come from Max Holmes, who remains more an of outside player than an inside one. Holmes was good but not great. Otherwise, the Cats relied on Bailey Smith for their attacking flair, but his field kicking was as bad as Zac Bailey’s goal kicking. He turned it over far too often, and had a dulled influence on the game.

So when Neale came on, the Lions just had far too much depth of creative talent around the ball for Geelong.

Neale, for me, was clearly in the best players, without even considering what he overcame to be out there on the field. The fact he did what he did in only half a game is greater evidence of his impact rather than marking him down for only playing a half.

On a day when it felt there might be no wrong decision for the Norm Smith Medal, the right decision was Will Ashcroft.

The great defender

Harris Andrews might not be better than Matthew Scarlett. He might not be superior to Alex Rance. But he is inferior to neither.

Andrews is to full-backs what Max Gawn is to rucks – the pre-eminent player in his position of his generation. And he is still only 28.

Andrews’ grand final was superb. Admittedly for the first half, this grand final felt like a match without forward lines because no forward – key or even small – had much impact on the game. Despite that, Andrews’ intercept marking – he took more than any player on the ground – was as damaging as Dane Zorko’s kicking.

Andrews was such a presence he forced Geelong to redirect how they played. Yes, he was playing on Shannon Neale, a young, inexperienced forward who had a bad day, but his presence forced Geelong into trying to change their attack. This was also helped significantly by the understated game of Darcy Gardiner who was beating Jeremy Cameron before the Cats forward broke his arm.

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