Sydney did what Sydney do at Geelong yesterday - they threw the kitchen sink at the Cats. Geelong did what they do at their best when confronted that way: a roaring trade in scrap metal.
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For more than a half, the match was played at Geelong's end of the ground, but on Sydney's always ferocious terms. Geelong was happy to accept them; given the choice between a feather-bed preliminary to the finals and this furnace, coach Chris Scott said this was preferable. He would.
One team had to break and it was Sydney. Geelong kicked eight unanswered goals in less than a quarter of football, widely spaced at first, and then in a torrent as the Swans buckled. Thereafter, all was sundries. Scott's only quibble was that with a 71-41 preponderance of inside 50s, the Cats' profit margin should have been even bigger.
But as he looked through the day's loot, two items would have pleased him more than most. In his first game for more than a year, Nathan Vardy took and won the first bounce. It was a resounding re-announcement. In a rare moment of fluency in the whirlpool that was the second quarter, he outmarked Marty Mattner one-on-one and coolly slotted a goal. Mid-way through the last quarter, he was subbed out, only because Geelong had that luxury by then, said Scott.
Don't be fooled by meagre statistics - Vardy opens up new timely horizons for the Cats. ''Nathan Vardy's a fantastic story,'' said Scott. ''We'll try not to get too excited about the way he played today, but it's going to be difficult. Right from the first bounce, where he jumped over the top of the Sydney ruckman, it was exciting to watch. Trent West is still very much our No. 1 ruckman, but we think we've got good support there.''
Vardy represents the new that somehow is melding perfectly with the old. The old was personified yesterday by Paul Chapman, fully a decade Vardy's senior, but still as hungry as any youth. When the game was at its hottest in the first quarter, he shook himself free to kick two goals. He added another in the third quarter from a classic goal-square mark. Others had time to size up each other and the incoming kick, but Chapman arrived at just the right moment.
Chapman has a lust to win every contest that by rights should have dulled at Geelong by now, but has not. He, too, tantalised Scott. ''It's a little bit unfair to say he's had an up-and-down season,'' he said. ''He's played more as a forward than he has previously, so he has been out of the play a bit. He's still a very, very dangerous player inside the forward 50.''
For Sydney, this was a difficult day. The loss of Sam Reid and, at the last minute, Nick Smith, left them bereft up forward. It wasn't just that the other forwards played poorly, but that for long stretches in the middle of the game, the Swans had no forwards.
At one stage in the second quarter, all but five players were in Geelong's forward 50. It meant the Cats had no workspace and explained their inefficiency then. But it also meant that when Sydney's beleaguered and mostly honourable backmen won the ball, they literally had nowhere to go.
Coach John Longmire said the Swans were ''a bit stagnant''. But the least you know about the Swans is that they will go to Adelaide next week armed with a new kitchen sink.
