Cats’ no show disappointing

Flaws on full display in demolition

DESCRIBE Geelong’s season in one word.

Column A reads: Inconsistent. Frustrating. Wasteful.

Column B: Contested. Exhilarating. Dangerfield.

You got all of them last night.

The problem was there was a lot of column A and not enough column B in the 61point preliminary final loss to Adelaide.

Geelong’s season was over six minutes into the second quarter. The margin was out to 48 points at that stage.

And that’s an optimistic view. Pessimistic Cats fans would have been calling it during the first term when the Crows shot out of the blocks with a six-goal-to-one first quarter.

For the second year in a row Geelong fell at the final hurdle, one win away from a grand final. And that’s hard to take for fans. What’s even harder to swallow is that in both last night’s loss to Adelaide and the 2016 defeat to Sydney, the Cats played a significant role in their own downfall.

They were sloppy with the ball in the first half, turning the ball over in some of the worst parts of the ground. And Adelaide will kill you

when it gets the turnover, such is the way it separates its forward line.

The Cats frustrated too. Some of their best players in 2017 had nights to forget.

To single them out is harsh, because there wouldn’t be one player that walked off Adelaide Oval in blue and white hoops last night happy with their performance. And Geelong was wasteful in front of goal, especially when Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood had managed to shift momentum its way midway through the second term.

But there were also parts where the Cats played some OK footy. It was patchy, but at times during the second quarter, after many had called the game over, a pulse was found.

It just never stayed around long enough to develop into a heartbeat.

Chris Scott will be asked if this season was a waste given the Cats fell just short of another grand final.

If you brutally analyse sea- son 2017, every team that doesn’t win the premiership has had a wasted season.

Geelong was horrible in both of its finals losses and brilliant in its one win. That’s been the Jekyll and Hyde nature of Geelong for the past two seasons now.

The gap is alarming and it continually gets exposed against the best teams in finals, especially in a competition where being 5 per cent off is enough to cost you a game.

But the Cats have played 36 players and had eight debutants, four coming off the rookie list.

The emergence of Tom Stewart, Brandan Parfitt and the rise of Zac Smith as one of the competition’s premier rucks are all big bonuses when looking towards 2018.

They’ve got games into a developing group. But they are going to need it with Tom Lonergan and Andrew Mackie retiring.

However there is only so long you can continually fall short. And that makes 2018 one of the biggest seasons in Geelong’s history.

It has to clear that final hurdle because, while one year in isolation is not a waste, a number of them in a row can turn into one.