All through the AFL season, Geelong coach Chris Scott felt like he was plugging holes.
The dam finally burst on Friday night when his Cats copped a 61-point hammering from Adelaide in a preliminary final.
"Our season has ebbed and flowed in terms of the cohesion of our group and our injury list," Scott said after Adelaide's 21.10 (136) to 10.15 (75) victory.
"We probably thought that we had a few holes right throughout the course of the season that we were always battling to fill.
"... We had eight or nine debutants for the year. We had a lot of players used across our list.
"And while it's a credit to the players that are able to still get us to the point where we still finish second on the ladder at the home-and-away end, it would be much more preferable to be playing 25, 26 players across the course of the year instead of 36, 37."
Scott said Geelong had no choice but to again transform next year, given the retirements of defensive stalwarts Andrew Mackie and Tom Lonergan.
"I hope that no one associated with Geelong falls into the trap of thinking that we were close again, and have just got to improve a little bit to go the next step," he said.
"Because the cold, hard reality is we have got to go back to the start again.
"And there are some really good football teams with a lot of talent who didn't make the eight this year who I suspect will get better.
"I wish we could just fast forward to the prelim final next year. But we have got so much work in front of us to even make the finals."
Scott said he wouldn't rush to judge Geelong's season.
"I don't really feel like it's the time to make those assessments because we are all really emotional at the moment," he said.
" ... Our job is to not let the emotion impact our decision making negatively."
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