Geelong coach Chris Scott is at a loss to explain his side's consecutive shock defeats, but concedes his the Cats are "a shadow" of the team they were in the first eight rounds of the year.
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Having started the season 7-1, Geelong followed their surprise defeat to Collingwood last weekend by losing to Carlton by 19 points at Etihad Stadium on Sunday. The Cats remain one of the premiership favourites, but Scott and star midfielder Patrick Dangerfield both said the team's drop-off had been significant.
Scott said he couldn't pinpoint the reason why Geelong's fortunes had faded.
"Sometimes there are situations when I have a really good idea [about the problem], I'm just not prepared to talk about it publicly. This is not one of those situations," Scott said.
"I wish is it was as easy as 'maybe we've done a bit too much [training] - we're flat.' Because the reality is we've had too eight day breaks and we've done less."
Scores were level at quarter time, but the Blues kicked clear in the second quarter and weren't headed thereafter. Scott said his team had let itself down in the game's "fundamentals" and would need to improve ahead of a challenging stretch of games in which they face Greater Western Sydney (Simonds Stadium), North Melbourne (Etihad) and the Western Bulldogs (Etihad). "We right at the moment are a shadow of the team we were three weeks ago.
"We had some clear focus areas going into the game and I thought we executed them really poorly even though the score was pretty close.
"I guess the fundamentals were really poor as well. It's two weeks in a row we've fumbled under pressure, had some really good looks to score - almost put down your glasses sort of stuff - and mucked them up.
"We'll coach the specific tactical sort of things really carefully. But we've got to train them harder."
While loath to show disrespect to either the Pies or Blues, Scott said his team had underperformed in conceding 104 points in both of their recent losses. "With respect to them, they haven't exactly been blowing teams out of the water with their offence."
Dangerfield denied that the Cats' effort had been down against Collingwood and Carlton, but agreed his team had issues. "We're not broken, but there's certainly some elements of our game that we need to continue to work on," Dangerfield said.
""We've got to focus on now. We're not a team that can rest on our laurels and just think that we can bank games and when the end of season comes hope we're playing finals.
"I think we've let ourselves down the last couple of weeks in the way we've played."
Forward Steven Motlop - who struggled on Sunday - may be scrutinised by the match review panel after appearing to throw a punch at the groin of Blues backman Zach Tuohy. Scott was disappointed with Motlop's discipline in any case - after the livewire conceded five free kicks without winning one.
In better news, Scott said Daniel Menzel, Nathan Vardy and Lincoln McCarthy were all in the frame to return against the Giants.
