Right now, the MCG sits silent in Yarra Park, its giant light towers standing stoic in anticipation of what the weekend, and indeed the next month of football might hold for all eight finalists.
It’s been the scene of Geelong’s greatest triumphs and its most heartbreaking losses, and in three days’ time, we’ll once again wrap ourselves in the hoops and wait in eager anticipation outside this mighty cathedral to get to our seats and do it all over again.
It’s been 1079 days since Geelong fans filled the terraces with the blue and white and Cats premiership captain Cameron Ling, no stranger to big games on the big stage, says the ground poses a unique challenge, especially when Collingwood is standing on the other side of the battle lines.
Speaking on the To The Final Bell podcast this week, Ling says it comes down to one thing: the noise.
“When it's a big Collingwood crowd, it's simply the noise,” he said. “The sound.”
“We're sitting a metre away from each other, but when that Collingwood crowd is going, and even the Geelong crowd trying to go against them, if I talk in a normal voice this far away from you at the MCG, you won't hear me.”
Geelong played all three finals at the MCG back in 2019 with mixed results: a 10 point loss to the Magpies, a 20 point win over the Eagles and a 19 point loss to the Tigers in front of a combined crowd of 239,672.
The Last Time We Met: Geelong vs Collingwood
Since then, the Cats have won 10 of their last 12 at the ground, including the Round 3 thriller where Geelong, 30 points down at three quarter time, chased down the Magpies on the back of six goals from Jeremy Cameron.
There was ‘only’ 53,000 there that day, but it was plenty. After Tom Hawkins kicked the sealer in the dying seconds, the place erupted. It’s the kind of noise that you feel in your bones.
Ling says the energy expelled through basic communication when it’s full is something that is unique to a ground that can hold almost 100,000 people, but he says the experience of Geelong’s playing list will hold them in good stead.
“I can still remember the 2007 preliminary final against Collingwood,” he recalled.
“The noise inside that ground, and late in the game when there's a kick the difference and there's stoppage after stoppage, Geelong fans were giving as good as they got, it was this true cauldron of fire and brimstone.
“And to communicate with each other - this is where the longevity of playing together is important - because often it can't be spoken or it can't be instructed verbally, you just need to have an instinct of how a teammate is going to move, how you’re going to move to cover them.”
Wherever you sit on whether finals games should be played at GMHBA Stadium, one thing is for certain, the biggest finals are run and won at the MCG and Ling says the prospect of heading up the highway on Saturday gives him ‘goosebumps.’
“When the MCG is like that, and we haven't had that in a final since 2019, it is going to be pretty amazing to be there on Saturday,” he said.
“In finals, it goes to a whole new level, and I get goosebumps from that feeling.
“That everything we've been through with Covid and the pandemic we're back at the footy and going to have 90,000 at a Cats final, that's pretty special.”
Let's hear you Cats fans.
