Cats lay feelings bare in honesty session
CHRIS Scott did something he rarely does on Saturday night.
Scott pulled the team together after a game for a lengthy chat and addressed the group after a terrible performance, which highlighted some significant problems that need to be sorted.
He usually bypasses the post-match meeting, win or lose, preferring to wait for the emotion to come out of the game before speaking with players a couple of days later.
But this one needed an immediate debrief.
Geelong has been a hotand-cold team since midway through last year, having not won consecutive games since surging to 11-1 when it belted Richmond in Round 12, 2019.
Defender Jed Bews said “everyone chimed in with what they thought” during the lengthy meeting.
“From the bye last year, we keep going win, loss, win, loss,” Bews said.
“We just tried to address it head-on and see if we can remedy that.”
When asked why Scott broke from the norm to speak post-game, he said to “nip it in the bud”.
He described it as a “spitballing session”.
Geelong trailed by 42 points in the third quarter on its home deck against winless Carlton in scenes not even the most optimistic Blues fan could have scripted.
The visitors prevailed by two points, but was the superior side for most the night.
Bews provided a few highlights for the Cats with some daring runs, including one impressive goal in the final quarter when he charged inside 50 and kicked on the run on his non-preferred side.
It helped fuel the Cats’ finalquarter fightback, but the deficit proved too much to reel in after Geelong squandered several chances to put further scoreboard pressure on the
Blues in the final term.
Bews said the side’s inconsistency was disappointing.
“We showed that last quarter what we can do but the first three just weren’t good enough,” he said.
“Everyone from players to staff, we all need to take ownership of it and get better.”
Slow starts have been a theme for Geelong in recent years and Bews said the side needed to adopt an aggressive mindset to “try to go out and win the game”.
He said it was hoped the meeting could be pivotal.
“That’s what we’re probably hoping for that from this we can look back and say it was the turning point and we never had another inconsistent game, at least for the rest of the season,” Bews said.
“We seem to be all right when our backs are against the wall.
“We had couple of injured guys, so that wasn’t going for us, but we got the first couple of goals (in the last quarter) and all of a sudden we had a sniff.
“We got a bit of confidence. It was just missing earlier, I don’t know why, but it was a good last quarter, that’s the positive to take out of it.”