Geelong Can't Afford To Let Scarlett Stray

The Age

Wednesday May 28, 2008

Jake Niall

GEELONG will learn soon whether the Friday night massacre was just the long-postponed dip it had to have, or a portent of increased vulnerability. To most observers, the outcome said more about Collingwood.

But there was one significant game within the game, played between Geelong's Matthew Scarlett - the game's premier defender - and the imposing yet erratic Anthony Rocca. This contest went decisively to the Magpies, in a manner that captured the attention of Geelong's rivals.

Scarlett shapes as the most important player in this year's premiership race - a judgement supported by defence-minded former coaches Danny Frawley and Robert Shaw, the latter noting that the full-back is usually the linchpin of a premiership team.

"The history of the great sides is that they are built around great full-backs. Kevin Sheedy often used to say this," said Shaw, now Fremantle's football manager, reeling off the names of Geoff Southby, Kelvin Moore, David Dench, Stephen Silvagni, Dustin Fletcher and Mal Michael.

Scarlett is, quite simply, the most indispensable player in the benchmark team. Gary Ablett might be as good, maybe even better, but other clubs believe his absence - or curtailment - wouldn't be as debilitating as that of Scarlett, who no longer has Matthew Egan, the injured All-Australian centre half-back, in support.

The loss of Egan for the season has forced the Cats to play P-plater Harry Taylor in a key defensive position in his first season. Up until Friday night, the Cats had gotten away with it, in part because few teams have the potency of Collingwood's power forward tandem of Rocca and Travis Cloke; the Lions, which have perhaps the most dynamic duo (Jonathan Brown and Daniel Bradshaw) were without Brown when they gave the Cats a fright at Geelong.

Hawthorn has, ominously, Buddy Franklin and Jarryd Roughead. The Cats haven't faced that double act yet, and it is worrisome for them that most of this year's premiership competitors - principally Hawthorn, Sydney, the Lions (and maybe Collingwood) - have more threatening key forwards than the teams they obliterated last year. The consensus is that two capable targets are needed to trouble them.

Aware of Scarlett's capacity not only to run off an aerobically challenged Rocca, but to control Collingwood's scoring area, the Magpies instructed Rocca to lead up the ground, sometimes as high as the wing, and drag the champion defender away from his sphere of influence - the defensive 50-metre arc.

Scarlett followed Rocca upfield, leaving the green Taylor exposed in one-out contests with Cloke, who grabbed six contested marks and booted four goals - three in the first half.

Rocca's one goal meant Scarlett held his stingy average for goals conceded this year but, as Frawley saw it, Rocca's performance - he plucked several marks and set up at least two goals - would have won high praise from coach Michael Malthouse because of what it did for his team. Knowing that Scarlett was out of the way, Collingwood booted the ball into its 50-metre arc quickly, backing its talented forwards to beat the rest of the Cats, including Taylor and an unsure Tom Harley, who seldom gets the best or second-best forward these days.

"You need someone who attracts the ball," said Frawley of the tactic of dragging Scarlett upfield. "(And) Rocca can kick from outside 50 metres."

Geelong yesterday acknowledged that it had erred by allowing Scarlett to be drawn out of the red zone and that he should have stayed back and played on whoever was at full-forward.

Geelong football operations manager Neil Balme said Scarlett and the Cats had planned for the defender to stay at home. "That was what was supposed to happen. Probably because of the nature of an Anthony Rocca it was a little bit harder to do."

Balme said Collingwood wasn't the first club to adopt tactics aimed at removing Scarlett from the scoring area. "They're always trying to do that . . . to take Scarlett out of the play."

The Cats have seen it, and acknowledged their mistake, but don't believe, in any case, that Collingwood's tactic had much influence on the result. Balme said the scale of defeat was caused by Geelong's collective failure in reaction to Collingwood's excellence, especially in applying pressure (55 tackles to half-time) and winning the ball.

"It (the Scarlett issue) is exacerbated by all the other things that happen," Balme said.

Shaw, Sheedy's opposition coach in Essendon's better days, recalled that teams routinely sought to drag Fletcher, a rebounding playmaker in the Scarlett mould, away from full-back. The Dons often responded by leaving their champion defender in his position, even if this meant he ended up on a lesser, or smaller opponent; once, the 197-centimetre Fletcher played on 171-centimetre Phillip Matera because Matera was actually the de facto full-forward.

While Essendon was sometimes criticised for not playing Fletcher on the opposition's premier forward in those days, Shaw said he took the view that it was more important to "hold" the defensive structure. "If they're away from full-back, you've fallen for the opposition's wish list," he said.

Top of Geelong's wish list must be that Scarlett remains healthy. The Cats obviously won't say that they're road-kill without him, but they know where he stands in the competition.

Balme, a 1970s Richmond player, rates "Scarlo" superior to that era's best attacking full-back, David Dench.

How would the premiers fare without the premier defender? "That's hypothetical," said Balme. "But he's a very important player."

© 2008 The Age

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