Geelong’s optimistic it can bounce back from an upset seven-point loss to Fremantle on Saturday at GMHBA Stadium, but admit there’s a lot of work to reach the finals.
The Dockers were very effective in defence keeping the Cats’ big goal scorers at bay, to come home with the 10.11 (71) to 9.10 (64) win.
Geelong coach Chris Scott admitted the Cats weren’t at their best against the Dockers.
“Even if you’re just watching, the generalisation would be that we’ve got some players who have been really, really effective, that are just off their best at the moment,” Scott said.
The Cats seemed to struggle across the ground all day, with the Dockers taking full advantage.
“What I’ve said all along is I think our best footy’s good enough, it’s just our consistency’s let us down this year and we haven’t found the right formula often enough,” Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir said.
“Largely we defended the ground really well today and competed our backsides off,” he said.
“We were consistent across the four quarters and this was our first four-quarter performance for a while.”
The stand-out moment was Docker Michael Frederick streaking out ahead of Cat Tom Stewart for a loose ball, snatching it up and flashing forward, before planting a running snap for one of the best goals of the season.
This put the visitors within one point, but another incredible snap by Freo’s Lachie Schultz sealed Geelong’s fate.
The loss sees the Cats slip out of the top eight after Carlton’s upset win over Collingwood on Friday night and now face a big challenge to make finals.
Geelong come up against three of the top five teams in the final four rounds, in Port Adelaide, Collingwood and St Kilda, and round out the season against eighth-placed Western Bulldogs.
The Power are coming off three losses in a row ahead of next week’s game against the Cats.
“The challenge for us is to bounce back and we’re optimistic we can,” Scott said after Saturday’s loss.
“We had a rough start to the year and bounced back, and it looked to me like we were really getting close to what we know we’re capable of,” he said.
“So, the challenge is getting back there, but we see a path to it and we should be doing everything we can to get there.
“We just don’t want to over react to some of the signs that we saw today, where we just looked off, a bit flat.”
