Patrick Dangerfield put Geelong on his back and carted them to a grand final. The 35-year-old unleashed one of the best and most important hours of his career, slaughtering Hawthorn out of the middle, on the ground, in the air, and around goals. There has been some outstanding individual performances in preliminary finals over the years. Gary Ablett Snr in 1989, Wayne Carey in 1994, Darren Jarman in 1997, Andrew McLeod in 1998, Mason Cox in 2018 and Max Gawn in 2021 are some of the standouts of the modern era. But Dangerfield’s game sits alongside any of those. “He was born to play at this time of year,” his coach said on Friday night. He kickstarted what had been a sluggish Cats outfit, and propelled them to a grand final.
The Cats were a bedraggled outfit early – hesitant, rushed and a shadow of the hyper-locked-in team we saw a fortnight ago. Their poor start was personified by an Irish rush of blood in the last line of defence that coughed up a goal to the lurking Jack Ginnivan. They were missing their handballs, meek in their tackles and sending forward entries sailing out on the full. They were awfully lucky not to be further behind at quarter time. Just to make matters harder, they were now going to have to win without Tom Stewart. He’s their gatekeeper, their organiser and their best distributor and now he was concussed.
