season preview
T
he conventional NEW LEADER: Defender Harry Taylor joins wisdom is that the Geelong Cats’ leadership group this a slide – if not in season, an appointment that highlights his rapid progression since joining the Cats at 2010 then not the end of the 2007 season. much beyond – is inevitable. However, we are entering a decade that may test football’s conventional wisdom. Geelong may well – despite Cameron Mooney’s pre-season comments that the team was “really pushing the limits of a four-year (premiership) window” – be able to use its current strength to entrench a system that lasts beyond the normal modern life cycle of (finite) success we have become conditioned to in the past two decades. Listen to Harry Taylor talk and you can understand why a successful era has happened and find it hard to argue it can’t continue. Taylor walked into Geelong in December of 2007, joining a team that had just won the flag. He immediately recognised he was in an environment that only looked forward. Treated If I was asked to as though he had explain something already been at that history The impression he has made in the club for two to the group, I dictates just two years – when he played or three years, the was expected to future in both Grand Finals for one expectations were know it, as well as possibilities, to win and one loss – has been so immediately high. see the ceiling strong that he was elevated to “I wasn’t babied explain it as imposed and the leadership group for 2010. around at all. If I HARRY TAYLOR impenetrable. Smart footballers are worth was asked to explain He sits after their weight in a game that something to the group, I a hard training session, as demands as much mentally as it was expected to know it, as well composed in repose as he appears does physically. Taylor is worth as explain it,” he says. “I guess when under pressure clearing his weight – officially up one the club is good at wiping that the ball from defence, zinc cream kilogram in two years. (previous) year away and using plastered across his nose. He and The environment Geelong the previous year for educational his fiancée Michelle Giudice (his has created gives it a significant purposes only.” Taylor, as you girlfriend since high school in chance to have an extended would expect, has not accepted Western Australia) are expecting period of success. The way any inevitability of decline. their first baby in June. He is just players manage themselves and After working hard to create 23. The best would appear to be the team’s direction provides an a winning culture, being internal mechanism that makes innovative and courageous along ahead of him. A physiotherapy student quick, decisive change possible. the way, Geelong is not about to “We have many players who are concede such a culture of success – working one day a week at Corio Bay Sports Medicine very good at sitting back, seeing can’t outlast this generation. Centre to finish off the practical something is not working and “Why the culture is so component of his degree – he has having the strength to speak up successful and why it works is taken an academic approach to about it,” Taylor says. because the players are the ones This leap of faith engineered who pass it down from generation getting better, building a dossier on his opponents by taking notes at the end of 2006 is now to generation,” Taylor says. “Once entrenched, even as new you build a culture, it’s a matter of after team meetings and games, and examining their style and personnel are charged with passing it on and maintaining it, sustaining it. and if we can do that, I guess we’ll tendencies via video footage during weekly preparatory The club knows the dangers be successful.” sessions. It is, he says, his of complacency are real. It is An intelligent man, Taylor is the nature of the beast that not one to be bound by perceived preferred method for staying stimulated. It has worked. dominant teams can find it more limits. He is unlikely to accept
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and more difficult to find ways to motivate themselves against opposition they know they have the raw talent to beat nine times out of 10. Taylor admits there is an ever-present danger that the team’s mindset can become such that Gary Ablett or Jimmy Bartel or Paul Chapman are expected to turn it on when the team needs a quick burst to turn the contest its way. “If we let those thoughts take over and we break away from keeping to the process and rely on talent to get us home, then other teams will run all over us and we’ll be back out of the eight,” Taylor says. For him, the secret is the same as it is for everyone who performs consistently: tick all the boxes, stick to the process. What the club expects is no different: switch on when you are at the club. Yep, those old clichés with the boring ring of truth. Geelong can afford to innovate more than most (the current crop has two flags in the bag), having graduated to become a club that makes calculated decisions to chase only one prize: the premiership. It was willing, for example, to have a staggered start to its pre-season training this year, with years of service determining when each player returned to train with the club (the longer a player had been at the Cats, the later he returned). “In terms of a mental break, I think that is going to really benefit us, particularly at the end of the year,” Taylor says. The Cats know that whatever happens against Essendon in round one, they will get better. Their simple agenda is to ensure veterans remain fresh for another campaign, right to go in late March-early April, but still with head down and enthusiasm high when July, August and September hit. Some may argue it’s an approach fraught with danger. That discounts the reality: any preparation program has risks. It is just another indicator that the Cats recognise each year demands a slightly different approach. Young players earning senior selection will be indoctrinated into a winning system, a dynamic one based on sound fundamentals. Taylor is passing