According to the AFL records, it was the 15th time in history that both teams have emulated a high score of seven goals and over in one quarter.
The drive down the forward line remained strong for the entire first term and each team had nine shots for goal. The Cats mastered seven and the Swans achieved eight.
Sydney’s Sam Reid kicked the first goal at one minute and 57 seconds in to the game, followed by George Horlin-Smith, who kicked the Cats first goal a minute later. By 20 minutes in, both teams had fixed four goals each. During the last 13 minutes in the opening quarter the Swans managed to smuggle four goals and the Cats kept it tight shooting another three.
Scott agreed that it would have been an exciting game to watch, however, a high scoring game is not exactly what you’re after.
“I don’t think either side wants a shoot out and maybe the shots were normal it was just the accuracy that was abnormal,” Chris Scott said.
“When the game settled down a little bit they still looked really dangerous I thought going in to attack, but in the congestion we started to look a little bit better and a little bit surer with our hands than we did earlier.”
It was the Cats first game for the year that they’ve won in clearances, finishing the game on 43 compared to the Swans 40.
“We changed a few things not major things but Pyke and Mumford are big ruckmen, we’ve got I guess undersized ruckmen compared to them but our guys did a good job, and then at ground level we were much much better,” Scott explained.
Young midfielder, Gorge Horlin-Smith, was given his fifth chance to join the Cats senior side on Friday night, and it didn’t take him long to show his worth, kicking a goal in the first two minutes of the game and finishing with 23 disposals.
“We stayed in the contest better and the injection of George Horlin-Smith actually helped as well, we thought for a guy that has only played a handful of games he was outstanding,” Scott said.
Horlin-Smith also acknowledged that the beginning of the match wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t until the second half that the Cats really started to dominate the contest, with Geelong ruling the roost in the third term, scoring seven goals to the Swans one.
“We were probably a little bit slow to start and probably a little bit easy to be scored against, but the second half we played some good football especially in that third quarter, it really set us up for the rest of the game,” Horlin-Smith said.
Geelong’s leading skipper, Joel Selwood, again played his role to extreme perfection. He grabbed every contest and didn’t let anything slip through his fingers, taking 31 possessions, 10 tackles and seven inside 50s.
Selwood said the game was up there with some of their best and the team really came together as one huge force.
“It’s up there, just a well fought effort by the team, it’s hard to single a player out, we knew we had to come up here and play really well all together, we were able to do that.”
“We actually started the game ok, we probably leaked a couple of goals that we didn’t need but all in all I’m pretty happy with the effort.”
“Both sides were a little bit off in their defensive pressure and I think we both scored very straight in the first quarter, which we haven’t done for a while and the Swans were doing the same, so it was a really high scoring game.”
