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Coach tells Cats to learn from loss

By Martin Blake
Sydney

September 10, 2005


Geelong's Cameron Mooney feels the pain of the close loss to Sydney last night.
Photo: Getty Images

Geelong coach Mark Thompson plans to inflict a videotape review of last night's heartstopping semi-final defeat by Sydney upon his players as early as Monday so the lessons of the defeat are learned.

Moments after Nick Davis' amazing volleyed goal with three seconds of time remaining gave Sydney a berth in the preliminary final and ended Geelong's season, Thompson said he would waste no time in using the result to his advantage for the future.

"Absolutely, they're going to review the game Monday morning and it'll be the best educational tool you could possibly get," said Thompson. "It won't be critical. It'll just be a very good review of the game and what we did really well and what we can do better next time we get in this situation."

Thompson said it was a matter of soaking up the experience. "(You can) use it for the rest of your life, basically. It's a game they could have won. Last year, we played a preliminary final and it was very tight and we had chances to win that if we'd handled that better. Eventually, you know as a coach of a club that you've got to experience these types of games and this type of pressure."

Thompson said the Cats would get a pass mark for their season given the circumstances, particularly the glut of mid-season injuries. "We've pulled it together. We started well, we got a lot of injuries. The whole club worked very hard to get it back to where it was tonight. We played some decent footy. We lost by the smallest of margins and we've done remarkably well to get to this point. That's all you can do."

Even last night, the Cats were decimated by the loss of captain and ruckman Steven King to a hamstring tear in the third quarter. Peter Riccardi (groin) and Nathan Ablett (knee) also were late withdrawals.

But Thompson said Geelong still should have won the game; he believed fatigue forced the Cats into defensiveness after David Johnson's goal at the two-minute mark of the final quarter put them 23 points up.

Thompson attached no blame to defender Josh Hunt, who conceded several goals to Davis in the final term, including the matchwinner. "We had a few opponents for Davis. Josh had the goal kicked against him but it wasn't that. The ball should have been out of bounds 50 metres up the field rather than where it was.

"The limelight will probably go on Josh because his opponent kicked the winning goal but there were a lot of things happened in that passage of play."

It was a sad ending for defender Brenton Sanderson, who is retiring after 14 seasons.

Sydney coach Paul Roos praised his side's perseverance but said it would not beat St Kilda next week if it did not have more good players.

"That was the message after the game, really. It's a great win, there's no doubt, but what it does is it gives us a chance to play next week. That's all," Roos said.

"It's not as if we've won some pot of gold or they give you anything special for winning tonight. You get to keep playing, which is special, there's no doubt about that, but the message from tonight is enjoy it but you've got to front up against a very, very good team next week at the MCG.

"We've got to fly again and there's certainly a lot of work to be done if we can be competitive against St Kilda."With EMMA QUAYLE

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