Zak Butters’ decision to join Western Bulldogs adds to Geelong’s pain after semi-final loss to Fremantle Dockers
Zak Butters waited until Geelong were out to knock them out.
What was intended as gentlemanly patience, to politely keep his counsel and avoid being a distraction to Geelong’s finals campaign, in the end served to compound the pain of the Cats’ finals exit.
Falling short again this year was one thing. Upsetting, sure, but the pain as the Cats walked from Optus Stadium was assuaged by the idea that next year would be different. Next year they would have Butters. Next year they would have Butters and Toby Greene and Rowan Marshall. Not a holy trinity, but a trinity for holes.
Now Butters is out, and it is doubtful that the other two targeted inclusions – if they both still arrive – are enough to shift Geelong’s premiership dial.
The Cats might get Marshall still. In fact, they probably will this time as St Kilda appear willing to, at least, discuss it this year, compared to last year and the year before.
Whether Marshall would have fared significantly better on Friday night against Fremantle than the highly talented but raw Mitch Edwards is academic. Luke Jackson is such a unique talent it is questionable if anyone can really contain him any more, but the more experienced Marshall might not have been as loose with his grappling as Edwards, who gave away two costly goals from free kicks.
The Cats might also still get Greene. They probably will. Though a little over a week ago after Peter Ryan reported in this masthead that Greene had met with Geelong officials to discuss his free agency and a reunion with Jeremy Cameron, Greene did an interview in which he admitted he’d been talking with Butters for days about their joint decisions.
“He [Butters] adds a bit of weight to that decision,” Greene said. “I wanted to see where his head was at [and] the things he values highly in his decision. That’s what I asked him.”
What now then? Does no Butters mean no Greene? Does Greene decide to be a one-club player? Industry expectation is that he will still end up at the Cats, that he will look at their open premiership window and climb in, and he probably will. But industry expectation also had Butters favouring Geelong until Saturday morning.
So, what now for Geelong? Without Butters, the same midfield hole is there. The midfield was smashed in Friday night’s semi-final, and in the second half of last year’s grand final. Yes, Max Holmes was injured this year, but they need help. As Andrew Wu pointed out in this masthead, a starting midfield of two defensive mids, Oisin Mullin and Mark O’Connor, with only Bailey Smith (poor in the first quarter, very good in the third) and Shaun Mannagh made for a centre square set-up lacking creativity and ability to win the ball.
Geelong will now ask, were we chasing Butters because we had a problem that he could fix or did we want him simply because he was available and any time you can get an elite player you try for it? It felt like he was both – the perfectly available player to solve a problem. So now if not him, then who?
The Cats are a bit like Hawthorn. They have two elite mids – Smith and Holmes – to the Hawks’ Will Day and Jai Newcombe, and both clubs chased a Zach/k to add depth and class to midfields that aren’t presently on the same level as Brisbane’s, Fremantle’s or Sydney’s.
Hawthorn might get there this year anyway with what they have got, but they know sustained success will require them to add to their midfield. Hawthorn still expect to get Zach Merrett, but the Cats have missed their Zak.
The surprise of the Butters decision was that Geelong missed out for once, which caused much celebration across the competition. Largely, the corks popped because a perennially strong club was not made stronger, but there was also a more Geelong-specific schadenfreude. It was a glee borne of frustration from rivals at the club’s history of attracting the best players and then boasting that they came for far less than everyone else was going to pay them because they were just so desperate to get to Geelong. It might be true, but do they have to keep saying it?
And to that end, the Butters decision quietens the whispering campaign (actually they are barely bothering to whisper any more) that is suspicious of everything Geelong, from Cotton On deals, to waiver letters and casino-going accused fraudsters. The Butters decision might have halted the WTF Geelong campaign.
Bulldogs add bite
Not since Tom Boyd arrived from GWS after the 2014 season have the Bulldogs landed a player like this. Not since Boyd has one of the smaller, lower profile clubs landed a player like this. Even Boyd, although he was a No.1 draft pick, was not a proven player when he left.
Tom De Koning’s move to St Kilda could be argued as akin to Butters going to the Dogs. But TDK was not a top-10 player like Butters is. His standing in the game is nowhere near that of the three-time All-Australian Port midfielder. De Koning’s offer at St Kilda was, though, similarly enormous to the Bulldogs’ nine-year offer to Butters (the same number of years as the Cats offered, but more per year than Geelong was prepared to part with).
But as a measure of the difference in players, it’s worth noting that Port would have paid Butters the same amount as the Dogs if he’d been prepared to stay. Carlton would never have gone close, or wanted to get close, to matching De Koning’s St Kilda terms.
Money no doubt played a part in Butters’ decision – reportedly up to $17 million over the life of the deal – but it is also true he chose the club he grew up following, which is captained by the player he loved the most. The sell was that bit easier for them.
Butters’ arrival at the Bulldogs profoundly changes them overnight. It changes attitudes to coach Luke Beveridge’s future in an instant.
The Dogs’ midfield, which was already very good, now has an unrelenting depth. They now have the luxury of deploying Marcus Bontempelli wherever they want him, not where they need him.
Bringing Jordon Butts in is a low-key smart decision. He is a sound key defender and will make them better. They also hung onto Buku Khamis, who resisted contract offers from Carlton. He and Butters are friends, having played a lot of junior footy together. Was it a coincidence that Khamis, who went to school with Butters at Maribyrnong College and played under-18s with him at the Western Jets, chose this week to re-sign with the Dogs, or did he have more than an inkling Butters was coming in?
With Sam Darcy due back from his knee injury, Butters coming in on the ball, Butts behind it, Khamis recommitting, and overtures from Tim English to leave surely more insistently rebuffed, the Bulldogs vault into serious premiership calculation.
Finally Hawks meet Lions in a final
The top four at the end of the season are now the last four in the finals. Wildcard round hasn’t really changed that much up.
Hawthorn and the Brisbane Lions have never played each other in a final. Given the number of finals both clubs have played in the past 20 years, the fact they have never met outside the home-and-away season is even more surprising than the fact Essendon have gone that whole time without winning a final (Yes, I know that’s an unnecessary Essendon drive-by.)
Brisbane looked like Brisbane again on Saturday night, not the arrogant rabble they were against the Swans.
To that end, the Hawks would have been uneasy watching their preliminary final opponents rifle through Adelaide. Hawthorn’s small forwards, in particular, are a stretch for the Lions defence, which still gave up 93 points to the Crows. That said, the Lions’ medium and small forwards are troublesome for the Hawks. Does Josh Weddle go to Cam Rayner? Jarman Impey to Zac Bailey? And, if so, who takes the responsibility for rebound running? James Sicily was brilliant last week, does he go to Logan Morris?
Dempsey denied
Given what we saw on replays, and assuming there were no other angles they judged the decision by – in the opaque world of AFL rules, decisions and broadcast this cannot be assumed – the ARC should have overruled the goal umpire’s soft call of a behind and given Geelong’s Ollie Dempsey a goal for his clever third-quarter scissor kick.
The replays looked conclusive enough to call it a goal.
The logic of asking for the umpire’s “soft call” is sound for if there were no ARC to second-guess, then the umpire would have paid a point. But using a soft call when there is an ARC to fall back on often looks very much like the umpire is saying, “help me out here, my best guess is this, but frankly you’ll have a better idea than me”. This looked like one of those cases.
Cricket, from which the idea of the “umpires’ call” or the “soft call” appears to take its lead, also has reviews of catches and run-outs where the umpire offers no opinion and just refers the decision to the reviewer.
Would there be a problem with an umpire asking for a review and saying, “I cannot be certain”? Of course, if the video is inconclusive, too, then someone has to make a decision, but the weight on the umpire’s best guess in a blink-of-an-eye moment like this appears to be too strong.
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Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.