By Luke Voogt
Geelong Cat’s women’s side will take on old enemy Hawthorn in the VFLW Grand Final on Sunday, ahead of its AFLW debut next year.
The Cats dispatched two sides that beat them earlier this year to make the Grand Final.
Geelong forward pocket Mia-Rae Clifford attributed the upset wins to sheer intensity and belief.
“I love being the underdog – it makes you fight just that little bit harder,” she said.
“(We) just fight for every inch of that footy field.”
The Cats will again go in as underdogs, after Hawthorn beat them in the last round of the season by 17 points.
“I still don’t think we’re at our best yet,” Clifford said.
“I’m confident we can win if we play the Geelong way and the brand of footy that we all love.”
The Cats beat Northern Territory Thunder in the first round of the finals, a side that handed them a 65-point drubbing in round 9.
They then defeated minor premiers Collingwood last Sunday to book their spot in the final game.
The Cats proved too tough for the Magpies with and without the ball in a preliminary final that was effectively over by three-quarter time.
“We beat them in the first prelim because we believed we could,” Clifford said.
Geelong dominated contests with superior intensity and applied fierce tackling pressure to keep the Magpies scoreless in the first term.
The Cats’ inaccurate goal-kicking kept the Magpies in it but Geelong scored three unanswered goals in the third term to lead by 27 at the final break.
The Magpies made a late charge but Geelong won by 14 points.
In prelim Clifford also faced her partner, Penny Cula-Reid, a former player at Collingwood and now a coach at the club.
“On the field she was my enemy – off the field she was my partner,” she said.
“As soon as I pulled my polo on it was all focus on my team.”
Geelong’s decades-long rivalry with Hawthorn in the men’s game had “filtered through” to the women’s league, despite the competition being relatively new in its current format, Clifford said.
“I’m a Geelong supporter too so I definitely have that dislike for Hawthorn. We want to get a bit of revenge for what happened earlier in the year too.”
The Cats’ speed, pressure and “adventurous” style of play would be the keys to defeating Hawthorn, Clifford said.
“They rely on long kicks whereas we like to run and carry.”
The Grand Final comes after Geelong gave Clifford a second chance following her delisting from Melbourne Football Club’s AFLW side last year.
“As soon as I walked in those doors at Geelong I knew it was my home,” she said.
“I was very grateful I got this opportunity again.”
Geelong coach Paul Hood experimented with Clifford by putting the former defender in the midfield, and then in the forward line.
“In the seven years I’d played footy I’d kicked maybe three goals running off the backline,” she said.
“He threw me in the midfield and then saw something in me that no one has ever seen before.”
The Cats would look to captain Bec Goring for inspiration, Clifford said.
“The speeches she gives us at quarter time, half time and before the game just give us that hunger to win.”
She also admired Elise Coventry’s work rate in the backline.
“She’s so competitive in the backline. She gives every contest her all.”
