A SHATTERED Geelong coach Chris Scott has struggled to explain another poor finals performance.
For the third year in a row, the Cats’ finals campaign has ended in disappointing fashion, this time they were overwhelmed by Melbourne’s pressure to the tune of 29 points.
Scott made a point of paying tribute to Melbourne who he described as “clearly the better team” and struggled to find an area where his side had been competitive.
“There were some inexplicable missed chances and blown opportunities,” Scott said.
“But they were clearly dominate around clearances and around the ball which is their strength. And they took the most of their chances early on.
“When you get killed in clearances, killed in contested ball, killed in ground balls inside 50 … and they tackled better and certainly smothered better.
“I almost can’t think of a facet of the game where we could say we outplayed them.”
Scott said he was happy with the team’s preparation off the bye, which has historically been a problem, even though Melbourne kicked five goals to zip in the first quarter.
“I was confident our preparation was good,” he said.
“I’ll need to take time to analyse it but we can’t do anything about it now.”
The recruitment of Gary Ablett was supposed to set the Cats up for a premiership run, after they’d made the past two preliminary finals.
Instead they were inconsistent throughout the season, falling into the eight and then being totally outplayed in the elimination final.
Scott said it was too early to make any assessment on the club’s list.
“The time for us to make those assessments is down the track,” he said.
“We’re always trying to improve our list.”
The Cats were the walking wounded afterwards with All-Australian defender Tom Stewart suffering a neck injury, Zach Tuohy battled a knee problem while Jordan Murdoch suffered a heavy knock in the first half.
