Geelong, Sydney advance to Aussie rules football grand final
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Geelong Cats are back in the Australian Football League grand final and looking for their first Australian rules football title since 2011.
The Cats advanced to the Sept. 24 grand final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground with a 71-point win over the Brisbane Lions — 8.12 (120) to 7.7 (49) — in front of 77,677 fans at the MCG.
They’ll play the Sydney Swans, who led for most of the match but had to hang on for a one-point win over Collingwood, beating the Magpies 14.11 (95) to 14.10 (94) on Saturday.
It will be Geelong’s second grand final appearance in three years, and the Cats will enter the match on a 15-game winning streak. It was the Cats’ sixth semifinal appearance since 2013, but their only grand final appearance in that span was a loss to Richmond in 2020.
The Cats, from a regional Victorian state city about 75 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Melbourne along Port Phillip Bay, are the “old boys” of the AFL. For the semifinal on Friday, the Cats fielded the oldest team in Victorian Football League/AFL history with an average age of 28 years, 173 days, including 10 players over the age of 30.
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