Josh Walker bagged a career-high five goals and won the praise of coach Chris Scott as Geelong crushed bottom side Brisbane by 56 points at Simonds Stadium on Saturday.
Ever since James Podsiadly left for Adelaide two years ago, the Cats have been searching for a consistent foil for spearhead Tom Hawkins.
The 22-year-old Walker looked very comfortable in the role on Saturday, marking strongly and kicking four of his five goals in the first half as the Cats won 17.11 (113) to 8.9 (57) to improve their win-loss record to 9-7 ahead of a season-defining clash against Sydney next weekend.
"In my view he is an AFL key forward," said Scott of Walker, who was playing his 28th senior match.
"There aren't many spots in teams for those players and next to Hawkins they look like a pretty powerful combination.
"We were really impressed with Josh and I am confident he is going to be a very good AFL player.
"Josh has felt a little bit of pressure as well and he has probably played his whole career that way but I think he feels more settled now."
Walker was pleased to have made a significant contribution after being quiet in last weekend's victory over GWS.
"I know I can do it and it's there for the taking so I have just done my best to help Hawk out," said Walker.
"He understandably gets a lot of attention every week so if we can take some attention away from Hawk and give him a chop-out that is a huge bonus for the team."
In a match which never threatened to reach any great heights, the Cats increased their lead at every change, with Steve Johnson chipping in with three goals to move to third spot overall on the club's all time goalkicking list.
As poor as Brisbane were for much of the day, it was still the first time in five matches where they had kicked more than seven goals.
The Cats had most of the dominant midfielders on the ground, led by Cam Guthrie, Josh Caddy and skipper Joel Selwood, while Brisbane ruckman Stefan Martin was among the Lions' best players.
Former skipper Jed Adcock played a lone hand up forward for the visitors with four of their eight goals as they slumped to a 10th straight loss.
"It's a familiar story," said Lions coach Justin Leppitsch.
"There's moments within our game - kicking 1.5 in the second quarter probably demoralised the group a bit, we didn't maximise our chances from our inside 50 dominance.
We just weren't clean enough to do it and there were a lot of errors too."
Brisbane onballer Allen Christensen was a mostly peripheral figure in his first match against Geelong since his off-season move to the Lions.
TOP GEELONG GOALKICKERS:
* 1021 - Gary Ablett senior (1984-96)
* 834 - Doug Wade (1961-72)
* 443 - Steve Johnson (2002-)
* 441 - Billy Brownless (1986-97)
* 429 - Lindsey White (1941 and 1944-50)
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