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The Aussie Rules Football is a significant part of Australian culture, but the Grand Final on September 26th, 2009 goes down in football history as one of the sport’s Greatest Games, as the Geelong Cats once again wrote themselves into the history books.
Geelong’s victory, by 12 points over the St Kilda Saints, was the zenith of a star-studded season, having surpassed Collingwood’
The present run by Geelong, greatly exceeds its last well known victory, of 1951/2 when the team won 23 successive games.
Geelong is the only team to come from behind at the three quarter mark to win, since Essendon’s performance in 1984. In spite of their brilliant three year performance, just a month ago numerous people had written Geelong off, as being a non-premiership challenger.
Though the Cats were in their third consecutive Grand Final, the majority of the Saints players were first time Grand Finalists. It was always expected, therefore, that the only thing that would separate the two well-matched sides, would be the experience of the Cats, to give them the slight winning edge.
This became clear, as the nail biting score clawed its way up, matched point by point. The Final turned out to be a replay of when the two teams had met in round 14, when they were separated by just one goal at the final siren.
The Saints have weathered a long 44 years without a premiership win, since beating Collingwood in 1966. The Saints have won 6 Grand Final games: 1913, 1965, 1966, 1971, 1997 and 2009.
Geelong, on the other hand, is one of the oldest football clubs and has gone under the various names of the Geelong Seagulls, Pivotonians and Black Cats. The popular Browlow Medal for best player of the season was named after a former Geelong secretary, Charles Browlow.
Tom W Wills, of Geelong, is considered by many, as the founder of the game in 1856, just three years before the creation of the Geelong club. Since then Geelong has won eight Grand Finals: 1925, 1931, 1937, 1951, 1952, 1963, 2007, and 2009.
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