THERE is a reason Geelong won 18 home-and-away games and, with the force of a hammer to the head, the Kangaroos were reminded of it at the MCG yesterday, in a qualifying final that surely started the engines on a premiership motorcade bound for Skilled Stadium.

It was, as a contest, a football match all but exhausted inside two quarters.

By the 10-minute mark of the third term, it was truly spent, utterly in Geelong's power and control. It was clear by then that the only concern for the minor premier was the threat of injury.

The least of the differences between the teams at that point was 10 goals, and quite clearly the sole loss Geelong needed to be wary of had nothing to do with the day at hand but preliminary final day and its personnel.

By game's end, with the margin of 106 points comfortably established as Geelong's biggest in a final, even this had amounted to nothing more substantial than the meek flag of resistance flown by the Kangaroos.

It began so differently. The first 15 minutes were appropriately intense and committed. Even brutal. A dozen minutes in, Michael Firrito attacked the football like he was out to protect his firstborn. He beat two opponents in his way to claim it and then sprinted on to goal from 50 metres just as the threat of being felled by Brad Ottens was realised.

He went down like a tree but seconds later, Cameron Ling felt Leigh Brown's shoulder drive into his chest. It was impossible to know whether it was an act of vengeance or an opportunity to floor Geelong's arch shutdown man that was simply too good to pass up.

Either way, as Ling was being removed from the game, it seemed important, even ominous, when Hamish McIntosh put the Roos in front by a straight kick moments later.

There was, briefly, after a pre-match stoush between the sides to stoke the mood, a sense that a serious physical confrontation was building. Looking back, it was a deception. Nothing of the sort materialised and it could even be argued that the symbolic moment was instead Ling's return.

With his disarming trot that does nothing to convey how mighty his stores of concentration and stamina are, Ling came back to eclipse Brent Harvey and help forge a pattern in which so many of the Kangaroos' senior and most important players were straitjacketed.

Harvey had seven possessions for the match but so, too, did Glenn Archer, who conceded three early goals to Paul Chapman and endured one of his worst big-occasion performances. Drew Petrie was kept to eight touches, most of them won as a ruckman instead of the team's key forward, and Corey Jones finished his day not only goalless but unsuccessfully running around after Chapman after unsuccessfully running around after Gary Ablett, who had been too much for Daniel Pratt to handle.

This collective failure was made to sting all the more by the totality, the completeness, of Geelong's performance. At the main break, nine Cats had won at least 10 possessions. Jimmy Bartel alone had 20. A mere three Kangaroos could say the same. There was hooped dominance everywhere. Even the half-time free-kick count, at 21-4, reflected the state of the game and the annihilation that was to come.

After it was brought to an end, eight Geelong players had gathered at least 20 possessions. Only Adam Simpson, who was beaten by James Kelly anyhow, was in that company for the Roos. The scoreboard told of 41 scoring shots to 10, of a defeat that might have been even heavier but for the Roos' accuracy in producing 8.2.

In that sense, the day could have been even worse for Dean Laidley, who now has coached his team twice in September for a return of two defeats, by a cumulative total of 193 points.

It will have galled him to watch what took place yesterday, not least the sight of what seemed like dozens of occasions when his players were caught holding the ball, often after being run down unaware from behind, but he may wonder most about several of his own decisions. His own awareness.

Geelong sooled Ling on to Harvey, worrying more about the quality of "Boomer's" touches than those of the captain Simpson. The Roos sent their best jumper puller, Brady Rawlings, out after Joel Corey instead of Gary Ablett. Geelong decided to put a halt to a game-breaker, the Roos to an accumulator. It seemed to make as much sense as putting out a cumbersome four-tall attack against the best rebounding team in the game, which, for one, played to the strengths of Darren Milburn and Matthew Scarlett, to opt for this course.

Ablett was best afield while Rawlings, eminently suited to the task of trying to curb the Geelong star, won a battle made peripheral in large part by the dominance of "Little Gazza" and Bartel.

A skirmish was won but the war was well and truly lost.

GEELONG 3.5 10.10 16.16 23.18 (156)
KANGAROOS 3.0 4.1 6.1 8.2 (50)
GOALS Geelong: Mooney 5, Chapman 5, N Ablett 3, Enright 2, G Ablett 2, Ottens 2, Bartel, S Johnson, Stokes, Mackie. Kangaroos: McIntosh, Grant, Brown, Petrie, Firrito, Edwards, Harvey, Wells.
BEST Geelong: Chapman, Milburn, Stokes, Scarlett, Ottens, Kelly, Ling, Mooney. Kangaroos: Firrito, Simpson, Edwards, Rawlings, Wells.
INJURIES — Kangaroos: Harris (hand).
UMPIRES Margetts, McLaren, Jeffery.
CROWD: 77,630 at the MCG.