{"id":154077,"date":"2025-09-19T09:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T09:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154077\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T09:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T09:42:09","slug":"live-updates-geelong-battle-old-rivals-hawthorn-for-first-place-in-afl-grand-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154077\/","title":{"rendered":"LIVE UPDATES: Geelong battle old rivals Hawthorn for first place in AFL grand final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Bruce McAvaney has watched a lot of footy over the years, and as one of the greatest rivalries in the AFL reignites tonight, the Channel Seven legend believes the Cats will prevail in what he is calling the \u201cthird chapter\u201d in the historic battle between Hawthorn and Geelong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cGeelong has to be the favourite. They\u2019re on a long winning run. They\u2019ve had the easier draw going into the finals, but I think the footy they played in the first week of the finals is as good as I\u2019ve seen all year,\u201d he told The Nightly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">It will be a battle between Hawthorn\u2019s crop of fresh-faced, brash stars and the Cats\u2019 young turks, as well as both sides\u2019 experienced and accomplished veterans leading the way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cIt\u2019s the next chapter in this incredible story between these two teams \u2014 with the 1989 grand final arguably the greatest of all time, and then the Hodge-Selwood era,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cI see this as maybe the third chapter in this incredible story that got going in \u201989, then we had that long, long run over a decade ago. And now we go to the third.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce McAvaney has watched a lot of footy over the years, and as one of the greatest rivalries&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,588,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-154077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sport","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}