Mullin’s Geelong run out of form in Grand Final

Form is a great deceiver when it comes to finals. We've seen it all before in Gaelic football: Meath in 2001, Mayo in 2006, Cork in 2009, Donegal in 2014, Galway in 2024. They stormed through the summer months with a look of inevitability, flattening everything in their path, only for the final to see demons cruelly return Geelong Cats carried that same aura to the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday. Registering a 38-point win in the first game of Finals Series and a 30-point win in the next, their scalps were collected with the swagger of champions-elect. Moreover, they had already dismantled their final opponents, Brisbane Lions, once in this series, so they rightfully walked into the Grand Final with the quiet assurance of a side who had cracked the code.

But finals are not solved on paper. They stretch, they tighten, they expose. And slowly, across four quarters of high octane football, the varnish began to peel from Geelong’s impressive season. What initially looked like inevitability gradually resembled exhaustion as the day developed.

The game itself tilted on Brisbane’s ability to find goals when they mattered most. Charlie Cameron reserved his best form for the MCG stage, finishing with four goals to his name, each one met with the roar of Country Roads rolling across the stands. His last, early in the final quarter, sealed the contest and wrote his name into Lions folklore.

Around him, Zac Bailey gave an exhibition in timing and decision-making. Brisbane’s younger forwards – Logan Morris, Kai Lohmann and Ty Gallop – all offered the variety and movement the Cats struggled to contain, bobbing up whenever the game called for a fresh injection of invention.

And then came Lachie Neale, a subplot on his own. On Grand Final day he returned from injury and turned the match. He produced a total of seventeen disposals, while exhibiting quick hands and sharp instincts, and was the man behind a monster goal that seemed to drain Geelong of their enthusiasm. It was the moment, many observers felt, when the tide stopped teasing and began to crash. Geelong were already drowning and Neale was handing them a stone. It was a merciless gesture.

For a while the contest had been even, the first-half a tense arm wrestle throughout. But in the second-half the Lions raced away to a 47-point win. The side are now back-to-back champions, leaving no doubt about their standing as the defining side of this era.

But despite Brisbane's dominance, there was still room for smaller stories, fleeting sparks that will linger for years to come. One of those moments came in the first-half when Oisín Mullin found himself in possession without any Brisbane man near him.

The sherrin spilled into space and in an instant he was away – that trademark stride eating up the ground. The Kilmaine man shifted through gears nobody else seemed to possess. He gathered, steadied and split the posts with the composure of a veteran forward, not a second-year import still learning the grammar of the game. It was only his second career goal, the first having only come earlier this month, but this one carried the weight of the occasion. While his side ran out of momentum in the decider, he seemed to be only finding his feet. If only there were a couple of more rounds to go.

For a player entrusted with the thankless job of tagging roles and defensive duties, it was a rare flash of spotlight-grabbing magic from the Mayo man. On Grand Final day, with 100,000 eyes staring down from the stands, he stood up.

If the goal was a flashbulb moment, the broader subplot of Mullin’s season has been less about scoring and more about shadowing. His name was all over Grand Final previews for one reason: Hugh McCluggage. An All-Australian midfielder at the peak of his powers, McCluggage had been tagged by Mullin in the qualifying final and the result was stark. Mullin restricted McCluggage to just fourteen disposals, with the Brisbane man later conceding that he had, in effect, been taught some lessons. The fact that a Mayo defender in only his second season could shape the psychology of an All-Australian remains striking.

Taggers are not meant to hunt headlines. They are the unseen workers, the ones who tilt contests without applause. They're the chimney sweeps of the game - unglamourous and forgotten, and yet the house burns down without them. Mullin’s presence in the conversation around the Grand Final speaks volumes about how the wider AFL community rate him.

And for Mayo, this was still a milestone occasion. Mullin became the first man from the county to walk onto an AFL Grand Final stage, carrying the green and red spirit into the MCG cauldron as he went. Whatever the result, the sight of a Mayo man in that environment was its own kind of victory.

In the end, the story belonged to Brisbane. Geelong, for all their form in recent weeks, had found September just one step too far. And yet, as celebrations broke out among the Brisbane players, Mullin’s season is still worth acknowledging.

He has already signed on to remain in Australia in the short term, and who could begrudge him the chance to continue developing as a full-time professional athlete? He is thriving in the Antipodes, carving out a career in a sport he barely knew two years ago. But the draw of the Mayo jersey, you get the sense, will be too strong to resist forever. One day he will come back, and when he does he will return sharper, fitter and even better than the back-to-back Young Footballer of the Year who first lit up the All-Ireland football championship.

For now, Mayo fans must be content watching his rise in the AFL with curiosity, admiration and the quiet anticipation of the day he returns. Australia may shape him, but Mayo will ultimately claim him before he finally calls it a day.