Well aware they let a golden chance to seal a top-four berth slip against St Kilda, Geelong will try to quickly move on from their costly loss and regain momentum before the AFL finals.
The Cats let a 33-point half-time lead, plus a guaranteed double chance in the finals, slip in Saturday night’s loss to St Kilda at Marvel Stadium.
Geelong sit fourth on 56 points behind Sydney (64), Port Adelaide (60) and GWS (60) and just ahead of Brisbane (54).
It means they must beat West Coast at GMHBA Stadium next Saturday to guarantee a top-four spot, while a home qualifying final appears unlikely.
Coach Chris Scott didn’t need to spell out to his players just how costly the 16.11 (107) to 14.5 (89) defeat was.
“Oh, they’re not morons and the missed opportunity bit – clearly we’re disappointed. We knew what was at stake,” Scott said.
“So the question now is, how much do you dwell on that missed opportunity, as opposed to how much you focus on the opportunity that’s in front of us? And that’s very clear too now.
“So look, we know what we have to do.
“Everyone’s had their moments in terms of missed opportunity. I don’t know of a team in the comp that hasn’t been ruing certain sections of the season.
“As much as anything, the challenge seems to be not allowing that to snowball, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on.”
Scott insisted Geelong would quickly move on to the Eagles game, where a win would seal a top-four berth.
“We have a choice,” he said.
“We can sort of accept that this is a huge blow to us, or we can move forward really quickly and reinforce what we can do, which I think is our likely course of action.”
Geelong were overrun by St Kilda, but Scott pointed to the first half as inspiring belief they too could play fast football.
He insisted his charges hadn’t experienced a fadeout, and labelled the Saints “Marvel specialists” after Geelong’s only game at the Docklands venue this season.
Utility Mark Blicavs was adamant the Cats could quickly regain their spark.
“It’s a tough game, so we’re gonna learn from it and keep working on it, but we’ve got to stay positive, because we’re still in with a great chance at that top four and that’s the goal,” he said.
“So we’re gonna obviously assess the game, but then stay positive and come in hungry, because there’s a job to do next week
“The goal still remains the same, and we’ve got to come in and keep trying to improve because we’ve got no other choice.”
Blicavs had no plans of expecting things to happen against the 16th-placed Eagles.
“No one’s an easy-beat in this comp,” he said.
“(It’s) their last game of the season. They’ll be up and about and want to end their season on a high, on a positive, so we’ll make sure we’re ready to play.”
