Autopsy Cats lose to GWS by 4 points

[Pure_Ownage]

Not sure why SDK was playing the Stewart role, when Sully was getting torched by Hogan. Scott needed to make that change. Sully is naturally a better intercept player than SDK is and SDK has the experience to go with Hogan and nullify him.

Clark playing is inexcusable. Feel sorry for the kid, he doesnt deserve the criticism because he's not ready and he's been thrown into the fire.

Henry is the softest player to ever put on the hoops.

Our bottom 6 is dog shit.

I could go through the whole list but i wont.

There weren't really many options besides clark-wiltshire was the other option but he's even less ready. The reality is injuries have left us hamstrung.

 

[Pollywaffle]

I’d rather George Horlin-Smith, Billie Smedts and Taylor Hunt than these flops.

Henry is only slightly better than Murdoch and right now I’d prefer Jordan’s speed.

No,Murdoch was a spud.
Henry is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. But he can play, Just needs a heart transplant….

 

[Pure_Ownage]

I can, who plays small defender ?

When we are fully fit it will be zuthrie or oconnor but we won't have a fully fit side for a while.

 

[thegerman]

A lot has been said of our play today. My only contributions are that we:

• need to work on teams run and spread from half back. The biggest difference I saw was how poor we were defending out of the forward line.
• on one hand we are totally unselfish with Danger trying to pass barely 15m to Stengle, instead of going for goal 40m out and on the other hand Mannagh trying the glory shot from 50m is utterly selfish garbage.
• Absolutely loved the run and carry of Bews today. A few others need to watch that and learn.

As a general comment, loved that we didn’t just fall in a hole and give up. There’s heart there, just got to clean up a bit.

 

[Aura]

No,Murdoch was a spud.
Henry is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. But he can play, Just needs a heart transplant….

I mean he lost one of his testicles playing for us maybe that’s part of the problem.

 

[cats_09]

Yes to dropping Clark at the next opportunity, but Stevens ain't that opportunity in my opinion. He goes alright in the 2s but will create defensive gaps unless he can do something to get himself off the mark quicker.

Watching the VFL, you get the opportunity to see both Clark & Stevens playing in the guts, in roles that they both seem most comfortable playing and that they've both topped the coaches votes polling for in a game this season

Neither of them have that Dangerfield type explosiveness over the first few steps, though Stevens isn't slow once he's moving but for a guy listed as 189cm I haven't really seen a strong contested marking presence from him which is something that would add another element to his game

So while I'd love to see Stevens given an opportunity at senior level, if it's a case of Clark out & Stevens in to the wing or the forward flank, I'm thinking it's going to take less than a half for some to be writing him off as those roles don't play to his strengths. Let's give him a game, but throw him into the thick of it to see what he can do

As for Clark; we can return him to the VFL where if we throw him into the guts we know he'll get 25/30 disposals and be hard as a cats head at every contest, but if we're not going to play him in the middle in the seniors it may not actually be helpful to him. When returning him to the VFL, maybe try playing him on the wing for a period of time, see how he goes actually developing into that role

 

[Art Vandelay_]

You're taking the loss very well.

Wouldn't be a loss if our bottom 3-4 players weren't EDFL Div 3 level footballers.
You can pick our bottom 3 every week before it happens. Whichever of Clark, Knevitt, Clohesy we've selected to play and/or Henry or Mullin.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Is it just me but every time I see Clohesy wearing the number 40 I think of Wojo dashing out of defence with a couple of bounces before landing the ball on Chappy's chest

 

[CatToTheFuture]

Jeez Bews was good when he had the ball.

Yeah it was good to see vintage Bewsy back. I'm mostly excited because we can see more of Mullin as a tagger when Humphries is back.

Is this farewell game number 6 for him? I've lost count

 

[Goggin Our Best]

A footballer's footballer. Not much flash or pizazz but does most things at a solid 7/10 all the time.

And hes still got a bit of pace a bit of point to point speed , and quite a few Geel players havent , and thats why GWS have got the Royal Routine card hand now against Geel in Geel

 

[Vdubs]

Is it just me but every time I see Clohesy wearing the number 40 I think of Wojo dashing out of defence with a couple of bounces before landing the ball on Chappy's chest

and then I wake up from my dream and realise we just have a mere mortal running around in #40....

 

[frggr]

Every Geelong player needs to take leaf out of Bailey Smith's book. The guy runs all day, goes in hard and never gives up. You can see how hungry he is, he never wants to get beaten. Anyone that doesn't want to play like that and give their all for the club can gtfo.

I think give it a bit of time and that sort of attitude will start to rub off on a few of the others who choose when to compete.....hopefully

 

[cats_09]

if both Stewy and Henry are out again next week I wouldnt be against Kolo coming in. Need at least one player that is solid one on one as that deepest defender. Thought Bews looked good and should stay in regardless who is back next week.

Kolodjashnij was out this week due to back spasms, so no guarantee he'll be right to go next week and considering how rusty he looked in his last VFL match, another VFL match wouldn't be out of the question

 

[frggr]

Parker just got paid 50 and a guaranteed goal for being pushed over after a free kick. Henry should've got 50 and Mannagh too.

And Mullin last week - we're on the rough end of 50/50s that's for sure

 

[Gazza Greatness]

Fair post.
I wish I had your optimism.
Still feel like we blew a golden opportunity last season.

This year we are worse off. We have beaten Collingwood, Adelaide & Hawthorn. Three potential finalists.
And we have also lost to GWS, Carlton & Brisbane. Again, Three potential finalists.

Huge fortnight coming up. Go 2-0 and today's loss is all but forgotten. 1-1 and it does set us up well in the second half.
Lose both, top four is virtually out of the question.

Mr Tilly: from round 9 last year (2024) we lost 6 of our 7 next games and were playing 'sh*t football' and a lot worse than today, then we got Danger back, with him and Tom Stewart going on ball to give us some inside contested grunt with then Shaun Mannagh and Lawson Humphries both coming into side and from that time forward we were probably a Max Holmes non-injury away from winning the granny. This year we are a better side with Bailey Smith being huge in for us but I'll also tell you that Tanner Bruhn has been a huge loss to us and he'll be back hopefully in June at some stage by all accounts.

Now currently to have our ruckman out and to have all of Jack Henry, Kolo, Tom Stewart and Lawson Humphries out of our backline is a huge loss, NO CLUB could deal with that, so all in all we've done remarkably well given all that has happened. On the bright side we have a really soft draw for most of the remaining season with important players coming back sooner rather than later. So I reckon we're still as good as chance as most come the latter part of the 2025 season on the proviso we get a satisfactory run on the injury front as our side is 'built for the 'G'..... and GO CATS !!!

 

[CatToTheFuture]

I thought SDK was good and attacked the contest well in the final quarter.

Early on he got lost in no man's land too often though. K rock recon he was trying to player more forward to stop the low hit up entry that GWS do well. Just didn't seem to know what he was doing

Yeah it was hard to tell for me through TV angles but the way Cadman was always loose looked like SDK was trying to play spare in an even numbers d50 or something. Something was not right structurally. Thought he was generally alright 1-1 and don't understand the hate

 

[joe444]

And of course added to the depleted stocks is he who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Gonna have to do something at the MSD.

 

[frggr]

Many babies being thrown out with bathwater after a close result.

Dunno how many Geelong supporters would go following Carlton or the Saints

 

[And_ROOS]

Can't see us winning anything this year unless some big changes are made. Can't believe how horrendously easy we have let pleb teams like the Saints, the Blues and now GWS, all teams who weren't in form, and we make them look like top 4 teams.

Unless Stanley can stay healthy in finals or Conway can get on the park at all teams will continue to get easy goals out of the centre against us. No point loading up on mids if we have no way to get it to them.

Blicavs having to ruck took him out of our defence where he has been good this season and left us with no option when it was clear early that SDK just wasn't up for the fight.

 

[frggr]

And of course added to the depleted stocks is he who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Gonna have to do something at the MSD.

We don't really - if we get Stewart, Kolo, J Henry and Humphries back we're looking 10 times better.

We beat the #1 team last week and nearly pulled off a win today despite only having two of our preferred back 6.

Couple that with a cruisier second half to the season and I think we'll arrive in September ready to go.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Yeah it was hard to tell for me through TV angles but the way Cadman was always loose looked like SDK was trying to play spare in an even numbers d50 or something. Something was not right structurally. Thought he was generally alright 1-1 and don't understand the hate

At the ground there would have been another 8-10 times in the game where GWS were cutting through our zone with ease and there'd be Cadman, Hogan, Stringer etc in the open with a numerical outnumber that'd result in an easy goal but they'd **** up one possession and we'd force a stoppage or turnover. We could have been beaten handsomely today as I cannot think of more than 1-2 times we did the same to them.

The system was definitely off, at a couple of those ****ed up opportunities Hogan was one out deepest forward on Mullin and then Duncan. Need Henry back in ASAP.

 

[Munich]

I mean he lost one of his testicles playing for us maybe that’s part of the problem.

I'd forgotten about that.

 

[Pollywaffle]

I can, who plays small defender ?

Looks like we are invested in Humphries for that role with MoC as a backup? I dunno, I still think Bews is a better stopper and his backline nous is good.
Versatility wins out in Scott’s teams I guess that’s why he may lose out.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

I was at the game. One thing I noticed is that Hogan often doesn't chase his man, and just sort of hangs back in his forward half. So when the ball is turned over and GWS get some quick movement their way, he's on his own or at least in a strong position while all the defenders are trying to run back.

A bit dumb for our boys not to notice, but also a bit of bad luck - if we hadn't had some horrible turnovers, we may have been able to make better use of the extra man.

Like being torched by Josh Jenkins

Jokes aside Hogan was pretty outstanding

 

[My Tilly]

Tanner Bruhn has been a huge loss to us and he'll be back hopefully in June at some stage by all accounts.

I was told his career was over. Nothing surer than that apparently.
Not only that, but we were to not even mention his name.

Must say, this has comes a bit of a shock if what you are saying is correct?