The Terrace

“…it’s a long and proud tradition, of the champions of old, and we know that in the future, you legends will evolve, and the cats are up and running, and screaming out for more. You can hear the pressure rising, you can hear the whole town roar, and the crowd thunders Go Cats!, we break the banner down – we know they’ll play with courage,  ’til the final siren sounds. And the rival team will know that…they’ve been run down by a pack – and they been eaten by, beaten by, defeated by, the Cats! It’s the cat attack, go cats, cat attack, Geelong, the cat attack, go cats, the cat attack, Geelong…”

The Cat Attack, 1990s

What better way to wedge Grand-Final week than with some poorly synthesised post-modern b-grade cock rock from the cattery? The Cat Attack not only stirs the inner emotions and get the fists of pride and fury pumping and banging about the room – it also throws us back to the halcyon days of Gary Ablett Snr, bowl cuts and no backline. Good times.

Here at The Terrace, we’re really not sure why they changed the much-loved traditional song. After all, Barry Crocker had a crack in 1982 with “Come on the cats” – and that came a crocker. Pun most definitely intended. So what led them to believe the ’90s would be any different? Was it a commemorative 20th anniversary event – a crap song to commemorate an unsuccessful original? If so, it really was another case of pure commemorative marketing genius (PCMG).

The Crock-mobile at The Cattery

3 days to go,

The Terrace

Geelong (Blakey and Gaz in particular) allegedly created a world record on Sunday by kicking the quickest goal ever in a game of AFL football. It probably doesn’t mean it was a world record (we’re sure some squid playing up bush has dobbed one quicker), but here at The Terrace we’ll take it none-the-less. For the…ummm…record, the goal was kicked in under 9 seconds. We’re not sure if it is indeed a record for a VFL/AFL game. Does anyone know? I seem to recall Gary Senior kicked a quick one at the start of the ’89 GF, but i don’t think it was that quick. As an aside, our archivist has spent the last four nights fumbling through the office records to reveal a dozen Geelong significant records, including:

1. Highest number of possessions in a game (498 vs Brisbane, 2009)
2. Greatest ever winning grand-final margin (Geelong 24.19.163 vs Port Adelaide 6.8.44, 2007)
3. Only team to have nine players selected in an All-Australian team (2007)
4. The highest ever aggregate total for points scored in a season (3,334, 1992)
5. Highest ever score (Geelong 37.17.239 vs Brisbane Bears 11.9.75, 1992)
6. Ahhhh…highest number of losing grand finals in the ’90s (3 – ouch!)
7. The only player to have been awarded the Coleman medal three years in a row (guess who in 1993-94-95).
8. The only Victorian club to temporarily change their song from a traditional baritone/brass-band-backed classic to a post-modern cock-rock anthem (Cat Attack, 1991-92)
9. The only club to win three games in a row by more than 100 points (1989)
10. The record for the most goals kicked in a VFL/AFL Grand Final (guess who with 9 goals in 1989).
11. Record for the longest winning streak in AFL/VFL history (23 games, 1952-53 – soon to be smashed perhaps?).
12. Keeping a club to the lowest ever score (Geelong 23.24.162 vs St Kilda 0.1.1 in 1899)

Further suggestions to boost The Terrace’s archive would be more than welcome…

Anyway, enough said. Enjoy the goal!

Welcome to ‘The Terrace’, a digital ode to all things GFC (insert financial crisis pun here) including but not limited to: Bruce ‘the president’ Lindner screamers; Hickey stand (new, not old) squinters; standing room munters; the incomparable pain of 5 modern-era GF losses (and the pant-wetting glory of one glorious modern-era victory); the highly misguided early 90′s ‘cat attack’ theme song (yes, the marketing genius behind that song will die a slow and painful death one day); the Malakellis brothers…and, of course, one G. Ablett. And that, gentlemen and ladies, is just the beginning. Join us for a year of that will either present more glory…or pain. Or something in between the two, whatever they call that…

And like all good Geelong things (that often end in bitter disappointment), let’s start this with a BANG!