Geelong has not undergone a rebuild for 14 years, and they are not about to start one now.
That was the bold declaration from coach Chris Scott, despite his team scrapping to stay in the top eight after suffering their sixth loss from their past seven games against Carlton at the MCG on Friday night.
The thumping 63-point defeat continued the Cats’ rapid fall down the ladder after they began the year 7-0.
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And while Scott envisaged blooding a few debutants in the coming weeks, he remained bullish about what the Cats could still achieve this season and insisted they weren’t about to start “completely losing our composure”.
“While tonight was a bad performance, I don’t think you sit back 8-6 at this stage of the season and think, ‘Oh well, now we’re rebuilding’,” Scott said.
“Haven’t done that for 14 years. Not going to start now.
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“What we won’t do is concede and say, ‘Oh well, they (Carlton) are better than us, so now we’ve got to slip back to the pack’ … we’re still optimistic about what we can do.
“If a really good team came up against Carlton playing like that, it would be interesting to see how they’d go because they were very, very good.
“I still think our best is pretty good, but we’ve just got some holes where we feel as if we need to be a bit creative at the moment in how we go after filling those roles and sometimes that causes a bit of pain.”
While Scott acknowledged his team had deficiencies they needed to address, most notably clearances and contested possessions, which they lost handsomely again 50-39 and 151-140 respectively, he also said a rough recent fixture had contributed to their on-field struggles.
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Since Round 6, the Cats have played against top-eight teams Sydney, Carlton (twice), GWS and Port Adelaide.
And there’s little respite in sight for the Cats with top-four contenders Essendon and Collingwood, as well as the in-form Hawks and Bulldogs, coming up for them in the next month.
“Do you want to know the honest answer? The one that coaches don’t normally give? When you look at the draw, we’re in a really tough period of the draw,” he said.
“If I were 10 years more inexperienced, there’s no way I’d say it, but it’s just a reality.
“And so we’ve got to hang in … that said, the mistake is (to say), ‘Oh no, it’s fine. We just played some good teams and now we’ll win the next nine to finish the season and we’ll be flying’.
“No. We’ve got serious (issues). We’ve come into a situation where we’ve had a patch of really, really good teams – contenders – at the same time we’ve run into problems with, one, the way we play, a bit of personnel stuff and we’re trying to fix stuff on the run.
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“But I think most teams will go through that phase. I’ll be surprised if anyone just cruises through the season.
“It is a marathon. So I hope that doesn’t come across as saying we’ve got easier teams in the next run than we’ve had in the last run.
“I still think the season’s going to ebb and flow a little bit.”
Scott was concerned by his team’s defensive frailties which have seen them concede five triple-figure scores in their past eight games.
“Good teams don’t give up big scores like that regularly,” Scott said.
Meanwhile, Scott said he wasn’t too concerned around Patrick Dangerfield’s dangerous tackle on Sam Walsh, but flagged caution around Tom Hawkins’ latest injury setback.
— NCA NewsWire