Joel tells of a Cat-astrophe

Selwood recalls pain of loss to Sydney

A CANDID Joel Selwood has conceded his team “got it wrong” in last year’s preliminary final loss to Sydney, saying the result hurt more than any other defeat, barring the 2008 Grand Final against Hawthorn.

But the Cats skipper has dismissed external suggestions his team is too reliant on himself and Brownlow medallist Patrick Dangerfield.

Stressing this would be the only time he would speak about Geelong’s embarrassing first half against Sydney, preferring to look to the future, he said the club would make minor tweaks rather than wholesale changes.

“We know what happened,” Selwood said yesterday.

“We didn’t get it right. We had a bad day. To be honest, this is the only time I will talk about it. I am happy to do the story once, but I won’t speak about it (again).

“We got a lot of things wrong. It was (our) set-up; it was a little bit of prep(aration) stuff that we would change now. In the moment, we probably thought we were going into the game fresh.

“We expected to play well from the word go, like we do every time. But to take 40 minutes to start the game the way we did (was very disappointing). We won the next 70 minutes, where we won a lot of the ball, and won a lot of the inside 50s, even if we weren’t using it well. But the game was gone.”

Selwood said the pain surrounding the loss was more about missed opportunity rather than a stinging criticism that the club attracted immediately after the match and also this preseason.

“It probably hurt the most it has since that Hawthorn one (in 2008),” he said.

“It was a similar case in that game. We got it wrong when we shouldn’t have got it wrong and it has happened twice now in big games.”

A three-time premiership player, and one of the most resilient footballers in the game, Selwood was hardly at fault on match day.

He and Dangerfield each had 39 disposals in the 37point preliminary final loss, but he concedes that everyone was culpable.

He remains confident the Cats will smash the post-game perception espoused by many commentators, including Jason Dunstall, that Geelong is “a two-man team”.

“(That talk) has never had much of an impact on me ... I have a lot more belief in my teammates than the outside world does,” Selwood said.

“It probably hurt the most it has since that Hawthorn one (in 2008)”