Geelong coach Chris Scott has dismissed suggestions his side needs to dramatically overhaul its list to again challenge for the premiership.
After winning 16 straight games to triumph in last year’s grand final, the Cats’ premiership defence ended in a whimper by losing to St Kilda by 33 points on Saturday night.
They will host the Western Bulldogs next Saturday night knowing it is mathematically impossible to qualify for the finals.
Geelong will sit out September for only the second time since 2007 in a period that has yielded four premierships, two under Scott’s coaching.
The Cats last missed finals in 2015, but were able to rebound the following year and make a preliminary final.
“We’ll work through this a little bit more over the next couple of months, but I mean we’re not looking at it thinking we need to be terrible for a few years to then improve,” Scott said.
“I don’t think we’re at that stage. There are only a few teams that are in the traditional rebuild at the moment, the others have been doing it for a while and therefore they’re now pretty good.”
Geelong faced St Kilda without injured premiership heroes Mark Blicavs, Cam Guthrie, Gary Rohan and Rhys Stanley, while veteran forward Tom Hawkins was underdone in his first game back from a hamstring strain.
Superstars Jeremy Cameron – who went goalless – and Patrick Dangerfield were well below their brilliant best.
Forward Brad Close (ankle) and defender Esava Ratugolea (hamstring) both went down against the Saints and will be ruled out of facing the Bulldogs in the final round.
“That’s probably one of the things with our season, it wasn’t just the guys that weren’t out on the park, it was the ones that could get out there, but were just way off their best for various reasons,” Scott said.
“Quite rightly in my opinion, we don’t want to advertise that, it doesn’t sound that good anyway.
“Some guys have been really restricted and a lot of those guys haven’t had a long off-season for 10 years so when we sit back we’ll find some reasons to be optimistic about the opportunity moving into the future.”
