After winning the NAB Cup and the opening two home-and-away matches on home turf in convincing fashion, Geelong coach Mark Thompson admitted that Saturday's clash against the unpredictable Hawks was a 'danger' match.
What did surprise the Cats coach, however, was how his team capitulated to Hawthorn's pressure, conceding nine straight goals in about 30 minutes in the second half to lose just their third match at Skilled Stadium since the start of 2004.
"I couldn't see this particular performance coming but I knew that there was always a danger when you have a couple of big wins … we hadn't lost up until today for six weeks," Thompson reflected.
"We haven't had much to complain about and it's just a good reality check, really. We were pretty awful."
Surprisingly, the Cats were smashed in the midfield by Hawthorn's runners, but the loss of ruckman Steven King in the opening five minutes severely unbalanced the Cats who went into the match without full-back Matthew Scarlett.
"I thought coming into the game that was our strength. I was more worried about our backline and our forward line. I thought our midfield would have held up but they clearly didn't," Thompson said.
"Hawthorn was much stronger at the ball, much smarter around the packs. To their credit, that's why they won the game."
Just as the loss of King in the third quarter of last year's semi-final loss to the Sydney Swans at the SCG hurt the Cats big time, the captain's importance to Geelong's structure was again highlighted when he left the field in the first quarter on Saturday.
"To lose a ruckman - a dominant ruckman - five minutes into the game put us under enormous pressure in the coaches' box," Thompson said.
"It just unbalanced our side enormously."
It was one of those days where nothing went right for the Cats. Ten consecutive behinds by the home team in the first half in tricky conditions at Skilled Stadium was merely one example.
"I've never seen a Geelong team for a long time drop as many marks - uncontested marks (and other mistakes like) missing the ball, picking the ball up off the ground, kicking for goal … things just didn't work today."
"As the day progressed, we were just really concerned … At half-time all we had to do was address the things that we talked about before the game and had been talking about all week."
"Were they listening all week? Because we knew how Hawthorn was going to play and they were doing exactly what we thought they'd do."
"Probably the coaches didn't have a great day and the players didn't have a great day - a bad day for the club."
Thompson didn't take the chance to thoroughly review the performance with the players in the immediate aftermath of the defeat.
"You can, in this game, get a little bit ahead of yourself. This will be a good reality check because they were pretty bad today and and they were pretty embarrassed about their performance," Thompson said.
"We'll talk Monday. You can already see they're embarrassed about the performance. We're hanging our heads as coaches, too."
"It's not just the players' fault. We've all got to take responsibility for this one. We just couldn't get up today."
