Geelong coach Chris Scott says he’s baffled by his team’s form slump

GEELONG coach Chris Scott is at a loss to explain his team’s form slump but former St Kilda coach Grant Thomas says the reason is obvious.

Geelong coach Chris Scott. Picture: Colleen Petch

GEELONG is a shadow of the team that was premiership favourite two weeks ago with coach Chris Scott at a loss for the reasons behind the sudden form slump.

The Cats looked flat on Sunday and couldn’t even muster enough to overcome a Carlton team who were two men down from midway through the opening quarter.

Despite having captain Marc Murphy and Liam Sumner out injured, the Blues were inspired to win their fifth game of the season by 19 points.

A frustrated Scott promised a thorough review of Geelong’s football operations in the coming days as he searched for answers.

“We, right at the moment, are a shadow of the team we were even three weeks ago,” Scott said.

“I’m trying to work it out. There are lots of little pieces, there is nothing obvious.

“Sometimes there are situations where I have a really good idea and I’m just not prepared to talk about it publicly, but this is not one of those situations.”

But former St Kilda coach Grant Thomas says the answer is staring Scott in the face.

Thomas tweeted on Monday morning that Geelong veterans including Tom Lonergan, Andrew Mackie and Corey Enright had lost their hunger for the contest.

Chris Scott wondering y his Cats are a shadow of team a month ago. Here's elephant in the room; Lonergan, Mackie lost eye of tiger.

— Grant Thomas (@Thomo_Grant) May 29, 2016

Corey Enright, whilst having an OK game is not as unconditional as he has been in past also. All super players but losing competitive edge

— Grant Thomas (@Thomo_Grant) May 29, 2016

Scott said the answer could be more simple: players are out of form.

“We will keep digging, the most obvious thing that everyone will see is we had guys who were playing really well three weeks ago who aren’t playing well now.

“From a team perspective we were very hard to score against for the first eight games of the year, now we’re not.

“Two teams (in Collingwood and Carlton), again with respect to them, they haven’t been blowing teams out of the water with their offence and they have kicked 100 points (against us) two weeks in a row.

Carlton forward Levi Casboult crashes into Geelong pair Corey Enright and Tom Lonergan. Picture: Colleen Petch

“We feel that we could have made it harder for them, they kicked straight and kicked 10 or 11 goals from turnovers.

“That suggests to us we’re giving them a good look from the way we are setting up when we have the ball and we’re much, much poorer behind the ball than we have been.”

The Cats again kicked poorly in front of goal having 25 scoring shots to 24 and also lacked discipline with the free-kick count in favour of Carlton 22-10.

“It (accuracy) is a big problem for us, there are a couple of glaring issues in our game that we need to fix, accuracy on goal is clearly one of them,” Scott said.

The Cats face a crunch game against GWS at Simonds Stadium on Saturday followed by North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium.

Ruckman Rhys Stanley is in doubt after leaving the ground in the last quarter with a foot injury while Daniel Menzel and Nathan Vardy are expected to return.

Corey Enright after the final sire. Picture: Colleen Petch

Scott put the heat on Steven Motlop with the star forward epitomising what had happened to his team.

“He has played some exhilarating football this year and now he has had two bad ones in a row,” Scott said.

“We will work really closely with him to find out why and if there are any glaring reasons.

“I have got a few specific ideas around how we can help him. He had a bad one today, there is no escaping that.

“We had a shocking free-kick count, he didn’t get one free kick and gave away five so when you’re not playing well and giving away free kicks, that’s not a good day.”

Geelong were the best last-quarter team in the competition over the opening couple of months but couldn’t generate anything yesterday with Scott denying it was because they were tired from over-training.

“We will look at it in great detail, I wish it was easy to say we have done a bit too much and we’re flat because of that but the reality is we have had two eight-day breaks and we have done less,” he said.

“That’s probably the more likely possibility. We will speak to everyone internally at our club who we rate, get their opinion and find a way forward very quickly.”