It’s a mild spring evening in Adelaide as the Cats run out under the lights of the Adelaide Oval.

As round eight dawns on this Friday night, Geelong sits in second position on the AFL ladder having won five consecutive games whilst their opponents the Crows sit in eighth with a 4-3 record.

This is of course “the Danger Game” as superstar midfielder Patrick Dangerfield returns to face his former side for the first time as a Cat. But the game is a watershed moment for so much more.

Geelong would win that match despite being incredibly wasteful in front of goal, registering 16 more scoring shots but only sealing victory by 26 points and, Inaccuracy aside, it was a clinical performance from the Cats.

Nonetheless, the victory has been arguably forgotten such is the tale of past nine weeks for the two respective sides.

Indeed, the Crows have not lost since that night in May. Don Pyke’s men have rocketed up the ladder to second and are now firmly in premiership calculations whilst the Cats have suffered their share of pain with surprise losses to Collingwood, Carlton and St.Kilda.

Round eight then was a true turning point for both clubs, and if your support is aligned to the Cats then you are no doubt hoping round 18 proves itself likewise.

Geelong is presented with the opportunity to re-stamp its own top-four credentials and send a message by disposing of the hottest team in football. So can the Cats learn something from the night their season turned sour?

To begin with, Geelong ticked a number of statistical boxes in their first meeting with the Crows.

The Cats were +56 in disposals though -7 in kicks, instead choosing to move the ball by hand to have some 63 more handballs than their opponents.

Though Geelong won the clearances by a slim margin of 42-40, the Crows actually won the battle in the centre 16-11 whilst the Cats won stoppages around the ground convincingly 31-24.

Geelong also enjoyed a contested possession differential of +8 (164-156).

Moving the ball into the forward half was the most telling factor, however. The Cats had a whopping 61 inside 50’s to Adelaide’s 44 and enjoyed 14 marks within the forward arcs to just 8.

Now as has been previously noted, a lot has changed since May. But if we are to compare current season averages to that night at the Adelaide Oval, we can get a clearer picture of how the Cats can get the job done once more.

As it currently stands, the Cats average 10.4 fewer disposals per game than the Crows and sit dead even for handballs at 168.2 per game. Of course, getting your hands on the footy more than your opponent is always the best way to ensure success, but we can see that once the Cats do indeed win the ball they are better served breaking the Crows open via handball first and foremost.

To do so, they will need to win the clearances and some nine weeks after that emphatic victory in South Australia, the Cats sit seventh in that area. Conversely, Adelaide are the second best side in the AFL for clearances but that only equates to +0.9 more clearance wins than Geelong on average.

If we take into account the fact that the Cats rank third for overall clearance success (43%), rank first for centre bounce clearance success (49.7%) and have the two best centre bounce clearance players in Patrick Dangerfield (1st) and Joel Selwood (=2), then it’s not absurd to think they will make the most of the clearances they do win and, at best, even turn that -0.9 around.

After all, they’ve done it before against the Crows.

In contested ball, Adelaide is ranked second and average +10 more contested possessions than the Cats. But Geelong could again swing that in their favour, given their contested possession differential is fourth in the AFL with +7.8 more contested possessions than their opponent per game.

And as for inside 50’s, the Cats and Crows draw level averaging 56.6 per game. That sits both teams equal third overall, but Geelong is still ranked number one for marks inside 50 with 15 per game and also sits number one for contested marks at 13.6 per game.

These statistics will all amount to nothing if the Cats fail to serve up their best football on Saturday night. But what we know is that if Geelong focuses on those areas at which they excelled in against the Crows in round eight then it is a proven formula that bodes well for success.

Perhaps then that watershed won’t be so much about the mild spring evening in May as a cold night in July.