Cat's Go Undefeated*

*In all games not seen in person by Greazy and Inky.

The Geelong Cats ran out to a 99 point win over the West Coast Eagles last night. The Eagles and Cats are the last two Champions of the Australian Football League, and it's easy to see in what direction each are going. With the 24.20(164) to 10.5(65) win the Cats improve their record to 21-1, but more on that later. The Eagles drop to 4-18 just two years after winning it all.

The 99 point margin of victory (the Cat's 4th such winning margin this year) means that Geelong once again finished with more points scored and less points allowed than any other team in the competition. Their 2672 points scored in the '08 season give them 238 more than Hawthorn, and an average points per game of 121. The 1651 points yielded by Geelong is 187 points less than Adelaide, and averages out to 75 points allowed per contest. All that adds up to an average margin of victory of 46 points for the "greatest team of all."

How nice for all the fans who got to see the other 21 games. You see, Inky and I were there for the "1" in 21-1. We've been following the Cats since our first trip to Geelong back in '05 and we took the time to be sure to be in Melbourne for this game on our most recent trip down under. Of all the games of footy I could see live, this rematch of one of the previous year's playoff games was the one I wanted.

So we went to the MCG and saw the Collingwood Magpies take the bark off Geelong 20.14(134) to 7.6(48). It was by far the most points scored against the Cats this year, and by far the least they themselves scored. In fact it was 73 point less than the average they normally score and 59 more than their opponents average against them. All in front of two American supporters, decked out in their Cats swag, who came ten thousand miles to see the game.

I don't want to sound ungrateful, because I've loved watching the Cats on Setanta and following them on various Aussie websites, but getting to hear the club song in person would have been nice. And, seeing the loss to Collingwood might not have been so bad, if they had lost another game, but they turned around and won the next 13 games they played sans Greazy and Inky, just as they had done in the 8 previous to our arrival. One thing's for sure, we won't be flying down to Oz for the finals, only to make them lose.