Geelong veteran Peter Riccardi labelled Geelong's 61-point drubbing to St Kilda as embarrassing. Riccardi was at a loss to explain the Cats' demise after a promising Wizard Cup campaign.

"It was disappointing, we went into the game confident and at the end of the day we embarrassed ourselves,'' Riccardi said.

"We got off to a good start, I don't know. It's one of those things where you've got to look at the tape and go through it, they've dominated the midfield and our backline was always under pressure.

"We got off to a flyer today, I don't know whether we relaxed or they switched on. The preparation was good but we fell away, I can't explain it.''

Despite the pre-match war of words and the rivalry that's stemmed from round 22 last year, Riccardi said there was no extra emphasis on beating the Saints.

"I think it's more media than anything, the St Kilda game is just as important as the Carlton game next week, but you never know, in years to come we may build a rivalry, we've both got good exciting lists,'' he said.

"We go into every game to win, there's no game that's bigger than the other but we wanted to get off to a good start.

"Like last pre-season, we had a good pre-season and we lost to the Bulldogs in round one and we got our pants pulled down tonight.''

With injury clouds hanging over Ben Graham, Brenton Sanderson and Darren Milburn and Matthew Scarlett and Cameron Mooney in danger of coming under scrutiny when the video is reviewed, Riccardi said Geelong's "young men'' must step up to ensure it doesn't go down the same path it did last year.

"I don't know how they (Graham, Milburn and Sanderson) are going, but if they can't play then the younger boys have got to step up,'' he said.

"They've been in the system for three or four years now and they're not young boys anymore, they're young men and we're in the big league.

"We have to show that we can play footy. We don't want to go down the same path as last year. This week we have to face it, get to the club and keep our chin up and have a fair dinkum crack against Carlton.''