AFL 2016: Blues score upset win over Cats

• As it happened: Carlton v Geelong

CARLTON 4.0 10.4 13.6 16.8 (104)
GEELONG 3.6 6.8 9.11 12.13 (85)
Goals: Carlton: A Everitt 4 D Armfield 3 B Gibbs 2 D Gorringe 2 A Walker E Curnow J Lamb L Casboult M Murphy. Geelong: C Gregson 2 C Guthrie 2 S Motlop 2 B Smedts C Enright J Bartel R Stanley T Hawkins Z Smith.
Best: Carlton: Gibbs, Docherty, Cripps, Curnow, Kreuzer, Everitt, Armfield, Simpson. Geelong: Enright, Bartel, Guthrie, Dangerfield, Henderson.
Umpires: Troy Pannell, Shane McInerney, Nicholas Foot.
Venue: Etihad Stadium.

Carlton could make the eight. Think about that. The Blues have won as many games as they have lost. Nearly half way through the season Carlton have won more games in 10 rounds than they did in all of last season.

Bryce Gibbs: In career-best form. Photo: Getty Images

They have now beaten a good side as well as poor ones. They have done it with two players down on the bench, including their captain. They have done it with one bloke back from a broken leg and another from knee surgery after missing just a week. This is a team that plays without expectations, or with no mind for the expectations of others.

For Geelong? One week is an aberration, two weeks is a rut. The Cats came to Etihad Stadium seeking a response to last week's humbling, but found no answers.

What they encountered was a Carlton side that will not go away. The surprise team of the year, this was the Blues' best win of 2016, with captain Marc Murphy and Liam Sumner out of the game from early in the day. They finished the match with no fit player on the bench.

The disappointed Cats leave the field after the match. Photo: Getty Images

There was consequently a sense that with two players down the Cats would overrun the Blues but Carlton refused to buy into that mindset, where Geelong seemed quite prepared to embrace it as an inevitability. The comeback never properly came.

After an even first term when Geelong wasted shot after shot at goal to see the scores tied at the first change despite Geelong having nine shots at goal to Carlton's three, the Blues lifted the pressure and hassled the Cats, causing errors from Geelong who were beating beaten around the ball.

Bryce Gibbs lifted in Murphy's absence to shoulder the creative burden in the middle while Patrick Cripps gradually worked to overcome Mark Blicavs' tag (Blicavs didn't get a possession in the second half) and have an influence through the important middle terms.

Dennis Armfield celebrates a goal. Photo: Getty Images

Troubling for Geelong was that captain Joel Selwood (just three first-term touches) was again subdued. He began the game as a forward which appears to be a concession to a leg injury that might have seen him miss. He is not covering the ground, so once Ed Curnow worked him over at the stoppage, the tagger would roll off and stretch Selwood with run.

Carlton in the first term had been able to win the ball in the middle but could find nothing or no one other than Corey Enright when they tried to kick it inside 50. In the second term they began to lower their eyes, they drew free kicks and 50 metre penalties and they punished Geelong's first quarter wastefulness with a six-goal term.

The Cats emerged from the main break without any noticeable lift in urgency. Tom Hawkins began to wrestle rather than lead at the ball and they were still losing around the stoppages.

The first goal of the second half typified the difference in the teams. Billie Smedts was tackled into giving the ball up and then with intense pressure the ball eventually bubbled over to Dennis Armfield to allow the pacey Blue to outrun Darcy Lang in a race into the 50 and a long goal.

Armfield's pace had unsettled Geelong all day. As ever you have take the loose with the good with Armfield, and tolerate the occasional turn over, but this day he was heavily in the positive side of the ledger.

Lachie Henderson was booed with every possession, which was fairly often. Seemingly Henderson's arrival at Carlton via Brisbane was forgotten, to say nothing of Dale Thomas' and Andrejs Everitt's clubs of origin.

Henderson was good but it was cleverness from Andrew Walker and an awareness of his former teammate's athleticism that saw him take Henderson up the ground in the last quarter, turn him around and beat him in the run back towards goal, then get the ball and run into open goal.

Moments later a Steven Motlop turnover saw Jed Lamb hare back into space inside 50 to be able to be easily picked out and convert for a five-goal lead.

"We knew they would keep coming because they are such a quality team so to be ble to hang on with two down on the bench was fantastic," Levi Casboult said. 

Geelong finally challenged with goals to Hawkins and Cory Gregson and the margin trimmed to three goals raising the idea who was a bright figure most of the day snapped a ball that lobbed in to trim the margin to three goals.

Now the missing players sitting injured on the bench began to look telling. There was half a quarter to play and Carlton looked willing but less than able. Geelong looked fitter but uncertain still.

As he had down through the day Sam Docherty was able to find the poise and run when it was needed from half back.

Paddy Dangerfield tried to take the game on to lift the team in the last but was unable to. He had a bursting run out of the centre early in the last term that might have delivered the team lifting goal - it was smothered off the boot.

They looked for him from a kick in late after Levi Casboult missed a goal only for Cripps to beat Dangerfield in the one-on-one contest. That he was then able to pass to Everitt, who ran past three Geelong defenders who failed to chase was a comment on the Cats' day.