Even with the number of changes the Cats made, the 52-point loss was about what many expected.
It was that elementary mistakes, made early in the game, never gave the team a real opportunity to show whether the competitive spirit they displayed in the last quarter would have stood up to the Cats when the game was hot.
It was like biting into a soft apple, reality never matched the anticipation.
The first mistake happened when defender Luke Thompson failed to rush the ball through within the first minute, which ended in a goal to Geelong first gamer Mitch Brown.
That mistake was compounded nine minutes later when a Tom Hawkins kick fell short and the ball was not punched through, allowing the Cats' opportunist forward Steve Johnson to pounce and kick a goal.
A lack of basic defence was how coach Neil Craig described the errors. A couple of ordinary free kicks were conceded and all of a sudden the Cats had five goals on the board before the Crows had managed to score.
Craig was forced to push numbers to the contest and in defence to stem the Geelong flow. This meant robbing the forward structure of numbers allowing Geelong defenders Harry Taylor, Matthew Scarlett and Corey Enright to form a wall across the middle of the ground.
At one stage the inside 50 count was 14-2 Geelong's way and life was impossible for key forward Kurt Tippett. A late flurry had brought the inside-50 deficit back to seven but the game was one-sided.
"Our first quarter was really poor, really poor for what we set ourselves for, some really basic elementary mistakes," Craig said after the match.
With the deficit 38 points at quarter-time and the Crows shell-shocked, some other targets needed to be set. Winning was clearly going to be difficult.
To their credit the Crows began to work hard around the stoppages. Bernie Vince was strong; first gamer, 28-year-old Ian Callinan, was a solid performer, and Scott Thompson was accumulating possessions as usual.
They did not have a go-to player who could mark along the wing so were forced to run the ball. The inevitable mistakes occurred, the execution of skills still an issue, but the game was more competitive.
At the finish the Crows had won the contested possession count by 18 (156-138), lead the inside 50s by 55-53 and were competitive around the stoppages.
However once again Geelong had a massive ascendancy in the uncontested possessions (209-273), with the Cats' ability to repeatedly put together chains of possessions that led to scores (something the Crows rarely did) indicating the gulf between the two teams.
The Cats had averaged 53 more uncontested possessions than the Crows in their previous four meetings.
Even with these figures at hand Craig did not gloss over the performance.
"I don't think we did very well today, apart from our effort, which is important because that has been under question, but I don't think we ever looked like threatening today," he said.
It was a candid assessment from the coach, one that is necessary both in public and behind closed doors for a group he is building. Of the defensive errors that put the team on the back foot Craig was animated in his response.
"Clearly a lot of it is happening with our younger players, so that needs to be addressed pretty strongly in terms of basic defence," he said, noting that he would have expected better efforts from a person playing amateur or SANFL football.
So Craig continues down the path of development he has marked out for the group.
Six losses on the trot do not help the mood of supporters but transition takes time. He knows some of their football has been substandard but there have been signs of what might be.
Even among the disappointment he saw something behind the result that provided a glimmer of hope.
"I liked their fight to try and do the best they possibly could with what we had," said Craig.
Having lost Chris Schmidt to a hamstring injury after the substitution of Shaun McKernan for Jack Gunston meant the team had to fight it out with limited rotations. They outscored Geelong by 12 points in the final quarter and had 13 scoring shots to six.
Craig keeps batting back the questions and remains as committed as ever to the task ahead: "My drive is stronger than ever. We're building a side here. We're building something that is going to be very, very good. (It's) never going to be easy."
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
