Patrick Dangerfield details how the Cats turned their form around against the Western Bulldogs

PATRICK Dangerfield knew going into Friday night’s game that three losses in a row could soon turn into five or six. So what was the one word that saved Geelong’s season?

Patrick Dangerfield was a standout on Friday night. Picture: Michael Klein

IT’S a very small word but it was the genesis for what happened at Simonds Stadium on Friday night.

While there was a lot of noise around Geelong during the week, the coaches and players stayed as one with the word “we” taking on a whole new meaning.

The one thing from the coaches which never deviated in the wake of the disappointing Essendon loss was that “we” were all in it together.

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It wasn’t, ‘you haven’t been performing,’ it wasn’t, ‘you haven’t been tackling, you haven’t got the want or the desire,’ everything that we spoke about was as a collective.

Maintaining the faith when you’re losing and things are not going according to plan is so crucial for a football club.

All the language at Geelong was about how we were going to get better as a group and how we were all going to improve.

Zach Tuohy and the Cats come together after the final siren to enjoy Friday night’s win. Picture: Getty Images

When this is the messaging coming from your senior coach and filtering down through the assistants, it just makes a massive difference because you feel like you’re in it together rather than being on an island.

That is such an important thing for a player.

If there is a splintering between the coaching staff and players then those three losses we’d had in a row, they turn into six. And then all of a sudden it turns into a quarter of the season.

The build-up to Friday night was foreign territory for a number of our players because they’d never played in three losses in a row.

Joel Selwood had played 236 games and won an extraordinary 180 of them. He’d never been in this position before.

The obvious question after producing a club record 138 tackles was did we spend hours on the skill at training during the week?

We actually did nothing different than to the previous three weeks.

Over the first five weeks of the season we won all our games but we knew we weren’t playing our best footy and it wasn’t like we weren’t focusing on tackling pressure then.

Every team talks about pressure on the ball but once again it comes back to speech versus action. It wasn’t like we hadn’t been talking about it or wanting to change things.

Getting obliterated and having just 14 tackles in a half last week, there is no doubt that sticks in the minds of players because that’s not the team we are and it doesn’t represent our values or how we like to play.

Patrick Dangerfield celebrates Geelong’s win with Scott (left) and Joel Selwood. Picture: Getty Images

It was a weird night against Essendon. It just felt like there were very few stoppages, it was really free flowing and the Bombers maintained the ball really well.

There weren’t a whole heap of opportunities for us to apply tackle pressure but we weren’t making the opportunities for ourselves, we weren’t keeping the ball inside the contest.

We were letting Essendon play the way they wanted to play which was the most frustrating thing.

When you play against the reigning premiers who support better than just about any team in the competition you either turn it up in the pressure tackling area or you don’t win.

It was quite simple and it’s the leaders who need to lead within a side and that was an area where we were really poor last week.

On Friday night we got it from the entire group and Scott Selwood epitomised what we were about. He’d had a wonderful pre-season but then in the last quarter of the final pre-season game he suffered a foot injury.

To then come in for your first game of the season and have 17 tackles was incredible and it was quite frightening how tough he was in the contest.

The other factor which can’t be underestimated was getting to play a home game.

Throw in the opening of the new stand and there was no doubt the atmosphere around Simonds Stadium was up a level and as a player you can’t help but embrace and enjoy that environment.

One player who certainly did was Harry Taylor with his performance showing our younger players what can be achieved by perseverance and a want to get better.

No one at the Geelong Football Club has put more time in to getting better than Harry. He showed that results like Friday night — By the way how good was that goal from the boundary line? — They don’t happen by chance, they’re earnt through work and dedication.

That was just another small part of a great evening overall for the football club and the bottom line which “we” all realised was that you can really build momentum for a season from performances like that.