BEFORE the season started, I was asked by my cousin, Big Mick Leary, which was the team to watch in 2008. Other, of course, than Geelong.

Big Mick is serious about his football, a period in Sydney having converted him to the Swans. In fact, the first thing Mick said to me as we drove away from a family funeral was: "I've got an article I want you to write. When are the umpires going to give Barry Hall a fair go?"

This caused me and one of my brothers some mirth since Big Mick was the Barry Hall of our childhood. Good-natured, but vigorous and physically capable beyond our slender builds, Big Mick was a farm lad whose father encouraged us to race and wrestle among ourselves. Big Mick was an infant Samson compared to my brother and I. We feared being torn apart.

As something of the aura of childhood never leaves us and Big Mick had his arm around me when he asked which was the team to watch, I gave the matter serious thought and said Collingwood.

I meant it. Keep your eye on Collingwood, I said. I then lost faith in my own prediction. Because I did watch Collingwood and they were a pale imitation of the team that went within one kick of the 2007 grand final. I've seen Collingwood a number of times this year.

It has been like looking at a photograph that's been left out in the sun and faded. Heath Shaw has the buzzing life of an annoying insect but, other than him, the rest were flat.

Well, not quite. "Neon" Leon Davis, in my view, was playing better than ever before and Alan Didak was consistently at the high end of his performance chart. But the key to Collingwood's future is Travis Cloke. Anthony Rocca is Collingwood's Trojan Horse. Everyone looks at him because he is so big and strong and he remains an interesting player, but the one who gives the team a threatening momentum when he's running and marking strongly is Cloke. He was also flat in the games I saw.

I'd almost written the Pies off. I didn't rate them as a contender after nine rounds.

I wondered if it were a repeat of something I have observed a number of times over the years. A young side gets to a preliminary final. Everyone assumes they'll go one step further next year but they've already peaked and what follows is anticlimax.

I doubted my own judgement and everyone else's. Had we misread them? Scott Pendlebury, such a fine and accomplished young player last year, was suddenly far less worrying to opposition teams. People keep waiting for Dale Thomas' career to explode but it hasn't quite happened.

I thought the Pies would be spirited but doomed against Geelong. They were spirited and magnificent. It was like the tape of last year's preliminary final had clicked into a fifth quarter. Collingwood was exactly as it had been in that game, Marty Clarke was back on his scooter, only now Geelong looked like Port Adelaide in last year's grand final.

How and why did this happen? Isn't that why we keep watching? Because we don't know. We can talk tactics and injuries. My colleague, Jake Niall, wrote this week that the key to defeating Geelong is nullifying Matthew Scarlett. Certainly, Scarlett was the spirit of the Cats' resistance when Geelong and Collingwood clashed mightily in the lead-up to last year's finals. Last weekend, Geelong was without ruckman Brad Ottens, a big loss in a team that relies on its midfield and, while Jimmy Bartel is not the first person to have won a Brownlow one year and struggled the next, he is playing with less sparkle and dash — to my eyes, a lot more defensively. Matthew Egan's continued absence at centre-half back also meant novice Harry Taylor had to pick up Cloke.

But I also wonder about the history of the two clubs. Geelong's champion team of the 1950s won two premierships and was heading for a third when it got derailed. It was Collingwood that both stopped the Cats' winning run and beat them in the grand final. If you believe, as I do, that Geelong's unique way of playing the game goes back to the fact that the Geelong Football Club originally had its own rules of play, it's also possible that the character of the rivalry between the two clubs goes back a long way, too.

Geelong's jumper with its blue and white hoops, I have read, portrays the effect of light on the waters of Corio Bay. There was nothing so arty about Collingwood's colours. The Magpies saw the world in black and white. The club born of the worst slum in the city of Melbourne in the 1890s entered the world with a certain rage. Its great rivalry, when I was a kid, was with Melbourne. From the perspective of class — and, in its formative years, Collingwood Football Club was a naked expression of class — Melbourne and Geelong are a bit similar. The Cats have always had young gentlemen in their ranks, products of the local private schools.

There's always been a difference in the footy Collingwood and Geelong played. Collingwood preached iron discipline to its players. Geelong's 1963 premiership coach Bobby Davis didn't believe it was his place to tell his players how to play. Collingwood has always had a negative edge Geelong lacked. It won last week by attacking the bodies of Geelong's players in a way they couldn't shake off, so that the grander design in their play was constantly frustrated. Only Gary Ablett jnr looked capable of turning the momentum of the match. The question now for Collingwood is can it play that way against other teams?

The 2008 season opened like a good book last weekend.