	{"id":112168,"date":"2025-03-15T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/?p=112168"},"modified":"2025-03-13T10:19:43","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T23:19:43","slug":"cats-to-start-2025-season-against-dockers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/sport\/cats-to-start-2025-season-against-dockers\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats to start 2025 season against Dockers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GEELONG is hoping for a purring start to the 2025 AFL premiership season this afternoon (Saturday, March 16) against the Fremantle Dockers.<\/p>\n<p>The Cats are coming off an eventful 10 days, after their Opening Round clash with the Brisbane Lions was postponed on Tuesday last week due to Cyclone Alfred.<\/p>\n<p>Both Geelong and Fremantle welcome several new faces into their respective lineups for the 1.20pm clash, with the Cats to unleash star recruit Bailey Smith.<\/p>\n<p>Cats vice-captain Tom Stewart said there was a big buzz heading into the Fremantle clash.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are really excited to come up against them in round one, they are going to be fresh and hungry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have got a lot of respect for every line of their team, they have got threats all over the board.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By all reports they have had a really good pre-season, so we are excited to come up against them on our home deck.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The match will be televised live on Kayo and Fox Footy.<\/p>\n<p>Tickets are available via Ticketmaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GEELONG is hoping for a purring start to the 2025 AFL premiership season this afternoon (Saturday, March 16) against the Fremantle Dockers. The Cats are coming off an eventful 10 days, after their Opening Round clash with the Brisbane Lions was postponed on Tuesday last week due to Cyclone Alfred. Both Geelong and Fremantle welcome [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/sport\/cats-to-start-2025-season-against-dockers\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":112174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-112168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Cats to start 2025 season against Dockers - Geelong Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Geelong Cats face Fremantle Dockers in their 2025 AFL season opener on March 16, featuring star recruit Bailey Smith and high excitement.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/sport\/cats-to-start-2025-season-against-dockers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cats to start 2025 season against Dockers - 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