GEELONG Â Â Â Â 2.3 Â Â Â Â 5.5 Â Â Â 10.9Â Â Â Â 12.13 Â Â Â (85)
HAWTHORN Â Â 1.2 Â Â Â Â 6.6Â Â Â Â 10.7 Â Â Â Â 12.11Â Â Â (83)
GOALSÂ Geelong: Caddy 2, McCarthy 2, Motlop 2, Hawkins 2, Guthrie, Menzel, Selwood, Blicavs. Hawthorn: Â Breust 3, Rioli 2, Gunston 2, Schoenmakers 2, Burgoyne 2, Hill.
BEST Geelong: Dangerfield, J Selwood, Guthrie, Blicavs, Menegola, Hawkins, Caddy, S Selwood. Hawthorn: Burgoyne, Lewis, Hodge, Rioli, Breust, Mitchell, Whitecross, Birchall.Â
INJURIESÂ Hawthorn: Burton (calf), Duryea (hand), Sicily (illness) replaced in selected side by Howe.Â
UMPIRESÂ Stevic, Meredith, Margetts.Â
CROWD 87,533 at the MCG
It's September. It's finals. It's that archetypal new season, on elevated terms, before heaving crowds. It's Hawthorn time. It's Geelong time. It's time for Geelong-Hawthorn. If ever there were two teams to awaken one another to their vocations, it is these two.
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Isaac Smith misses his set shot after the siren to hand Geelong a two point win.
They didn't disappoint, though the Hawks will have gone home disappointed. Isaac Smith had a kick after the siren to win it, but slipped the wrong side of the right-hand goal post. Call it the posthumous post. By that infinitesimal margin, the Cats are in a preliminary final, the Hawks in a sudden-death semi, morever against the suddenly rampant Bulldogs. "That's almost as good as footy gets," said Geelong coach Chris Scott, who could afford to spare a magnanimous pang of sympathy for Smith and the Hawks, their best enemy.
If at times it seemed these two teams had seen too much of each other, and rubbed each other up the wrong way, in the end it was the sort of rubbing that produces genies from bottles and spellbinding entertainment. For Geelong, it proved real, for Hawks ultimately a phantom. There were so many twists and turns that no one can be said to have decided it. But looking back, a free kick and 50-metre penalty conceded by Luke Hodge far from the ball early in the second quarter and producing for Joel Selwood the only gimme goal of the night will burr.
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This fixture has such epic history and tension that "Sicily out" sounded like a geopolitical upheaval. In context, it just about was. His replacement was Howe, not a question but a statement. Everything this night would be a statement.
At first, familiarity was the ruling dynamic. At one level, it bred contempt, evident in a series of niggling clashes, spilling even into a milling at the quarter-time break. Central always, sometimes as hero, sometimes villain, was Hodge. It wasn't long before he and Scott Selwood both were sporting gashes and bandages. No Geelong-Hawthorn match has properly begun until a Selwood has spilled blood. The tipping point was the compounding penalty against Hodge early in the second term for an offence far from play.
At another level, familiarity fathered stalemate. For both teams, midfielders sagged back, making for defensive swarms.  All of Geelong's first-quarter behinds were rushed; the whole game was. Even that smoothie Patrick Dangerfield lacked his usual polish; he made up for it with volume. It was obvious that goals would have to come as exceptions and be exceptional. Steve Motlop, given barely an inch, turned it into a mile for one. Paul Puopolo and Brad Hill worked the boundary-line margins for another.
The game would be played throughout in an easily anticipated pattern. Geelong dominated the contested ball to an almost preternatural degree, Hawthorn the uncontested ball even more so. Neither preferred for these margins to be so wide, but each was helpless to thwart it. They are what they are.
The rope was wrenched this way, then that, but the marker barely budged. Even when the monkey-grip effect was relieved slightly, goals still were scarce and precious. If there was a difference, it was that Geelong had outlets up forward even for ragged kicks. Hawthorn had to be what the Hawks have been these past 10 or so years, pinpoint. They were again. Shaun Burgoyne needed only half a glimpse and half a step for one, Luke Breust a glimmer from the boundary line for another. But overall, the Hawks were more efficient in the field, the Cats in converting goalscoring chances.
A leap and a launch from Cyril Rioli at the start of the third quarter that would have put him in line for a medal on the vault at the Olympics precipitated a run of three Hawthorn goals that momentarily looked game-breaking. But the Cats got them all back, in a fell swoop. Thereafter, it was goal for goal, not to mention eye for eye and tooth for tooth. Bodies were battered, minds, too. The theatre of battle moved for minutes at a time, from Hawthorn's forward line to Geelong's and back again, but the shape did not. While the stars negated one another, Cam Guthrie's shift from defence to midfield at half-time probably tipped the scales, by a grain of rice's worth, but enough.
The last quarter was a replica of the first, a 15-rounder that yielded just four goals. Scott was beginning to mark up his whiteboard for extra time, and was gracious enough to admit that it would have been a fitting way to decide such a monumental match.
The Hawks have excelled in these contests this year, winning five games by fewer than a goal and not losing one. Coach Alastair Clarkson acknowledged that it was a record that couldn't last. Smith had that record on the instep of his boot, but there it would remain. Though distraught themselves, his teammates made to console him. "Chin up," Clarkson told him, remembering that Smith once kicked a goal from all of 70 metres in a grand final. Such is footy.
No Geelong-Hawthorn match has properly begun until a Selwood has spilled blood.
Befitting the night, Hawthorn lost in the act of almost winning, Geelong won though it had done all it could and the game was out of its hands. Both coaches were noble enough to say how easily the result might have been reversed, and how no-one could have complained if it was. "Philosophical, really," said Clarkson. "If you're going to lose a final, this is the one to lose. All the rest there is no second chance."
Always in the Hawks' recent history, there is an inspiring precedent. Now, it is that they lost their first final last year, and won the flag. Asked if he expected to see the Hawks again this year, Scott shrugged as if the very thought exhausted him. For now, the Cats, they get to sit back and enjoy the next chapter. Stay tuned.
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