Geelong is back on top of the AFL ladder after the Cats made a historic comeback against the Dogs on Friday night.
The Cats were 37 points behind in the second quarter before turning the competition on its head to emerge with a win from 10.12 (72) to 9.7 (61).
The quarterly comeback of 36 points is the cats’ biggest comeback since 1931.
It’s also only the third time since 1979 that the Cats return after six goals in the club’s history.
Also, according to AFL statistician @sirswampthing, it is only the fourth time in the history of AFL / VFL football that two teams have come back more than 36 points behind in the same football round after Essendon also scores a wonderful comeback win over Hawthorn had on Thursday evening.
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The win brings the Cats back to the top of the table with just three more games before the final.
Due to the hard loss, the dogs hang on a thread in their place in the top eight and bring them back into the drop zone.
But the dogs also played soccer in the final until they died.
The two teams traded blows in a stunning fourth quarter before Geelong showed his class with some big late goals for Tom Hawkins and Gary Rohan.
Those kicks gave the cats 10 of the last 13 goals in the game after the dogs exploded from the blocks with the first six foals in the game.
Hawkins put the Cats ahead by a little over five minutes for the first time when he calmly shot a hard kick from 5 meters inside the limit.
After a fourth quarter shootout in which five goals were scored in less than 10 minutes, Hawkins’ goals slammed the floodgates for both clubs while a grandstand was being completed.
Only when Rohan took a loose handball from the dogs and strolled to the top of the goal square to kick the match winner with 43 seconds of play time, the cats could breathe a sigh of relief.
It was an absurd turnaround after the dogs were demolished in the first quarter.
The dogs extended their lead to 37 points in the second quarter before the cats scored their first goal against Gryan Miers in the seventh minute of the second quarter.
From there it was one-way traffic.
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