AFTER experiencing his first loss to Carlton as a coach, Chris Scott is staring down the barrel of another unwanted first when the Cats play Greater Western Sydney at Simonds Stadium on Saturday.

A loss would mean the Cats had been beaten three times in a row for the first time in the same season during Scott's reign and it would be the first time Geelong supporters have experienced three consecutive losses since a defeat to West Coast in round 10, 2006.

The Cats, however, did go close last season when they drew with St Kilda on either side of a loss.

That Eagles loss was so long ago that only three players from that game – Jimmy Bartel, Corey Enright and Andrew Mackie – remain on the Cats' list, while Steve Johnson will line up for Greater Western Sydney in his return to Simonds Stadium.

In an even season such a losing streak might not seem disastrous, but only two premiership teams in the past 20 years – the Sydney Swans in 2005 and Adelaide in 1997 – lost three in a row during their flag years.

It's why the two disappointing losses to Collingwood and Carlton have caused a re-evaluation of the Cats' prospects in 2016, despite the fact they still sit third on the ladder with seven wins from 10 games.

As Scott said after the game, conceding 60 inside 50s to the Blues and, for the second week in a row, 100 points to the opposition, is a concern for a team that had impressed with its defensive actions in the first eight rounds.

Their goalkicking has been errant, missing five set shots against Carlton, adding to the seven missed against Collingwood and Adelaide and the 10 set shot behinds against West Coast.

"We’ll coach the specific, tactical game things carefully because they can be fixed easily, but we’ve got to train them a little bit harder, evidently," Scott said.

Some individuals need to bounce back hard after two ordinary weeks.

For the third week in succession, Tom Hawkins opened the Cats account with a behind, and this time the key forward missed his first two set shots.

From that point he appeared to retreat into his shell, once again wanting to wrestle with his opponent Sam Rowe rather than get on the move, and worse, have a set shot at goal.

Hawkins battled away with five tackles but his influence wasn't significant.

"We'd like him to get a little bit easier ball [but] we're certainly not coaching him to stand there and try to just draw the ball on his head. We can kick it a little bit better to encourage him to move," Scott said.

"He can move better and he can play better … he plays like Tom Hawkins and that is what we will encourage him to do. We just want him to play better."

Steve Motlop gave away five free kicks and had just 15 disposals, two of which were turnovers that led directly to Carlton goals.

"He’s played some exhilarating football this year and he’s had two bad ones in a row," he said.

"We’ll work really closely with him to find out why — if there’s any glaring reasons — and I’ve a few ideas in mind with how we can help him."

And Mark Blicavs, last year's best and fairest winner, did not chalk up a disposal for the second half, which is hard to believe given his consistency in recent seasons.

Scott said a number of pieces had gone missing since round eight and reminded everyone of the relevance of the early-season prediction that it would take time for the team to jell.

"We’ll keep digging, but the most obvious thing is we’ve got some guys who were playing really well and they aren’t playing well now."