All eyes were on Marvel Stadium and the Gabba on Sunday as four teams all with finals spots to shore up did battle.
In stark contrast, at the MCG 24 hours earlier, all eyes had glazed over as one of the season's most predictable outcomes confirmed one of the game's most enduring truisms. So much so that we're almost at the stage of rewriting that old line about life's certainties.
These days, those non-negotiables are more likely to be death, taxes, and Geelong being a key player in another AFL finals series. And at a time when football performance has never been more volatile, nor the competition a tougher environment in which to succeed, it is yet another achievement by the Cats which deserves recognition.
Saturday's 39-point win over Richmond was classic Geelong. The Cats both flexed their attacking muscle while starving the Tigers of oxygen. It was 11 goals to two at half-time and game over, the entire second half really just about avoiding injury and maintaining fitness and touch.
Most post-game AFL coach's press conferences run for eight to nine minutes at minimum. On Saturday, Geelong coach Chris Scott's didn't even make it to the five-minute mark. There was simply nothing which hadn't been asked and answered previously. A bit like this football team out on the park.
Once again, Geelong is ready to roll into a September campaign primed and ready. The Cats will finish second with 17 wins and only six losses, three of which were by only single-figure margins. They've won 12 of their past 14 games, and their last six straight.
They will host an MCG qualifying final against Brisbane. And if they win that they will officially have clinched a post-season top four finish for the 15th time in 22 seasons since 2004. This year will make it 19 finals appearances in those 22 years. From which have come four premierships and six Grand Finals.
Since the start of that 2004 season, Mark Thompson's fifth as coach of Geelong, the Cats have played 528 games, for 365 wins, 139 losses and four draws. As a strike rate, that is just a fraction under 70%. Over more than two decades, that is ridiculous.
Thompson and Chris Scott have two Geelong premierships apiece and each (to date in Scott's case) have coached the Cats in three Grand Finals. Scott's winning record over his 15 seasons as coach (357 games) is 68.4%. The only other coaches of the post-2000 era to come anywhere near that number over anything like that long are Sydney's John Longmire, and, yep, Thompson.
But it's not just about the coaching. Far from it. The Cats have continually led the way also in recruiting (eg. the Max Holmes draft coup of 2020) and list management (keeping that incredibly talented and senior group of 2007-11 together).
Their talent pool is like one of those automatically-replenishing bottles of drink. How many clubs could possibly win a premiership with the oldest team in the history of the game (as the Cats did in 2022), miss the finals the following year, and then not only avoid a seemingly inevitable bottoming-out, but come within 10 points of a Grand Final spot the very next year?
In 2025, they're still the fifth-oldest and third-most experienced list in the competition, but Saturday's line-up contained 10 players who weren't there on Grand Final day in 2022.
Holmes would have been but for a very untimely hamstring injury, Oisin Mullin, Ollie Dempsey and Mitch Knevitt were there but miles away from the best 23, and Jack Bowes, Connor O'Sullivan, Lawson Humphries, Shaun Mannagh, Jack Martin, and Bailey Smith hadn't yet arrived at the club.
Scott and the Cats are always pushing the envelope, whether on selection, recruiting, man management, game style, fitness or strength and conditioning. It means they never look stale or out of ideas and possibilities. The post-success "funk", which has at some stage claimed nearly all their premiership-winning contemporaries during the 2000s, is alien to them.
And that has plenty to do also with their player-driven leadership culture, the envy of every other club in the competition. Those big names and senior player leaders of 20-plus years ago have inevitably parlayed their success into success in other spheres, which even now continue to benefit the club beyond merely the passing on of the baton on-field.
Look at the current Geelong administration, where triple premiership defender Andrew Mackie is football manager, and Steven King, James Kelly, and James Rahilly all assistant coaches, while Shannon Byrnes is team runner and works in player development.
Geelong 30 years ago was renowned for often alienating its former players. Now it not only embraces them, they go on continuing to assist the cause decades after their retirements as players.
Another reason this incredible club just rolls seamlessly from one great year into the next, and indeed, just as seamlessly even from the very rare not-so-great years to the next. It bores the headline writers silly, and it drives rival club supporters batty. Why? Because what they wouldn't all give for their clubs to be as reliable. Not to mention as bloody good.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.