What makes Simonds Stadium such a hard place for the opposition to play?

The arctic temperatures in the middle of winter? The near completely blue and white crowd? The swirling winds that come off the bay and create havoc for opposition forwards?

All of those and probably more are reason why teams struggle at Simonds Stadium.

But one way that opposition teams do struggle is quite apparent.

Since 2008, only four teams have scored over 100 points against the Cats at their home ground. Two of those teams were in the Cats inconsistent 2015 season when they let Fremantle in round two (104 points) and Melbourne in round 13 (113 points) top the ton at the Cattery and beat the Cats.

The other two instances were the Brisbane Lions (111 points) and Port Adelaide (104 points) in 2013. Unfortunately for the Lions and Power it still wasn’t enough to beat the Cats at home.

So remarkably in the 62 games at Simonds Stadium since 2008 only four teams have scored over 100 points against the Cats and only two of them have gone on to beat the Cats. 

Corey Enright, who will play his 98th game at Simonds Stadium this week, this week said he wanted the Cats home ground to become a difficult trip for opposition clubs.

The stats would say it already is.

Team100+ scores at SS (from 62 games)% of 100+ scores at SS100+ scores at other grounds (from 144 games)% of 100+ scores at other grounds
Cats4572.6%5940.9%
Opposition46.5%3725.7%
Differential+4166.1%+2215.2%

*Across Geelong games including finals since Rd 1, 2008