Geelong Cats 2022 AFL Premiers

I’m a huge Cats fan. Last time they won the premiership, I didn’t have the blog. Now seems as good a time as ever to mention them here.

Yesterday the Geelong Cats won their tenth premiership in the AFL (we knew the competition as the VFL until 1990), and their first since 2011.

The AFL/ Australian Football has operated in various forms since 1858. Melbourne and Geelong, respectively founded in 1858 and 1859, are among the oldest continuous sporting clubs in the world. Coincidentally, Melbourne was the 2021 premier.

Back in 2007, the Cats won their seventh, but first since 1963. A very long drought and having not been born in 1963, 2007 was the first one I’ve seen them win. In my lifetime, I’ve watched the Cats lose six Grand Finals and win four.

Here’s a complete list of how the Cats have fared over the years.

Yesterday’s win was pretty exciting. The game itself was one-sided; the Cats defeated the Sydney Swans by 81 points. But so many times since 2011, the Cats have gone so close; they only missed the finals once (2015), lost five preliminary finals, and lost the Grand Final in 2020.

Yesterday, of course, they won the Grand Final, in front of 100,024 people at the MCG (and countless millions on TV).

They won fielding the oldest team ever (by average age) at this level.

The critics labelled the Cats ‘Too Old, Too Slow’ for several years.

It led to a great comeback tweet from the club:

Too old, too slow, too good 👴🏻🏆 The cup will look great down at the retirement home #Untameable pic.twitter.com/kNJPHYDQss

— Geelong Cats (@GeelongCats) September 24, 2022

Too Old, Too Slow… Too good!

_{^{Geelong Premiership Captain Joel Selwood and yours truly…}}

Go Cats!