{"id":796467,"date":"2026-07-13T00:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/796467\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T00:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:18:12","slug":"out-of-tickets-damning-vision-exposes-cats-alarming-collapse-as-cliff-edge-fears-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/796467\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Out of tickets?\u2019: Damning vision exposes Cats\u2019 alarming collapse as \u2018cliff edge\u2019 fears grow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dual premiership Kangaroo David King has questioned whether Geelong is \u201cout of tickets\u201d, exposing an alarming number of defensive lapses during the Cats\u2019 shock loss to the Giants<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It comes as Herald Sun chief football writer Jay Clark suggested the Cats\u2019 ability to \u201cdefy gravity\u201d for almost two decades was beginning to take its toll.<\/p>\n

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The Cats are in the middle of a stunning mid-season slide<\/a>, losing five of their past six games. They\u2019ve slipped from third to ninth on the ladder and put their top-six hopes in jeopardy, let alone top-four aspirations.<\/p>\n

Geelong on Saturday night led by as much as 39 points in the third quarter, but conceded nine of the last 10 goals of the game to go down by 13 points.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Fox Footy\u2019s First Crack on Sunday night, King said he was stunned by how susceptible the Cats were.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve seen as many defensive lapses or deficiencies in a fortnight of footy,\u201d King told First Crack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw it last week and I thought: \u2018Nah they\u2019ll still be fine, they\u2019re still one of the major players for me.\u2019 And you watch them again on the weekend and they lead by 39 points late in the third and you thought \u2018yeah they\u2019ll get this done, they\u2019ll be fine\u2019. And then they just have these moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Callum Brown got away from Tom Stewart.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n

King then highlighted several costly Cats errors during the Giants\u2019 comeback win, which you can watch in our video player above.<\/p>\n

The first example saw five-time All-Australian Tom Stewart positioned too far away from Callum Brown near the goalsquare and not keeping pace with the Giants forward before Brown received the ball out of congestion and snapped a goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just doesn\u2019t move,\u201d King said of Stewart.<\/p>\n

The dual All-Australian then showed two clips featuring premiership on-baller Tom Atkins \u2013 widely regarded as the Cats\u2019 best two-way midfielder.<\/p>\n

Firstly, Atkins failed to track Xavier O\u2019Halloran closely enough during a Giants forward entry. Although the Cats initially won the ball back in defence, a turnover allowed the Giants to attack again \u2013 and neither Atkins nor any Cats teammate was anywhere near O\u2019Halloran.<\/p>\n

Tom Atkins and Xavier O’Halloran.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never said this about Atkins,\u201d King said. \u201cHe\u2019s been one of their heart and soul players of this midfield forever and we\u2019ve shown vision after vision after vision of this guy. But he didn\u2019t really want to push with O\u2019Halloran.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got away with the first one \u2026 but there he is again. And there\u2019s no one else covering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atkins was then shown not paying close enough attention to O\u2019Halloran in another example, with the Giant getting free to set up a set-shot opportunity for Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cSame thing here. You\u2019ve already been nutted a couple of times, who you got? I know they were down on rotations and that can be a factor, but this is a 120-minute game,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

Bulldogs games record-holder Brad Johnson added: \u201cHis communication is almost non-existent there. He\u2019s normally the driver of everything while the ball is flowing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

King\u2019s last example showed run-with player Oisin Mullin opting to hand over his match-up to Finn Callaghan at a stoppage, before the explosive Giants midfielder burst away from congestion and nailed a game-sealing goal \u2013 all while Mullin was caught in no man\u2019s land.<\/p>\n

Oisin Mullin didn’t follow Finn Callaghan.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n

King also pointed out the Cats, since Round 12, are ranked 16th in the competition for conceding a score in their defensive 50. They ranked inside the top three in each of the previous two seasons \u2014 reaching the Grand Final and a preliminary final respectively \u2014 and were second in the league during their 2022 premiership campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just makes you wonder when you look at their defensive vulnerabilities: Are they out of tickets?\u201d King asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefensively, they\u2019re miles from where they\u2019ve been over the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you can win the flag if your D50 is as vulnerable as that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Chris Scott would be sitting back and saying: \u2018What\u2019s happened here? How has this crept into our psyche and ability to be here one minute and there the next?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a different Geelong right now and it makes you question can they gather? Because if they are still going to hang in \u2026 it\u2019s going to have to be defensively, because they\u2019re not as gifted offensively as some of those others (teams).\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest loss prompted First Crack host Jay Clark to question whether the Cats\u2019 extraordinary run had finally reached its tipping point. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a footy club that\u2019s been defying gravity for the best part of two decades. So is this a motivational deficiency? Have they just been up for so long that it\u2019s eventually got them?\u201d Clark asked.<\/p>\n

Scott gives Cameron update after loss | 07:12<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about \u2018the cliff edge\u2019 for this football club for a very long time. Do you think this is the tipping point? <\/p>\n

King replied: \u201cNo I don\u2019t, but they got smacked out of the middle \u2026 So it\u2019s not just one section. It\u2019s across the board.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s enough talent there to fix it. It\u2019s either a concentration or application issue \u2026 Chris Scott has to find that answer and he knows that better than us, he knows exactly what he\u2019s demanding from each player.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t got a lot of time to fix it, that\u2019s the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said Geelong\u2019s midfield now had to drive the turnaround. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey will get the looks if the midfield for this group can actually start to turn it,\u201d Johnson told First Crack.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they the group to turn what we\u2019re seeing now? Because you go with the Cats: \u2018They\u2019ll fix it, they\u2019ll be right next week.\u2019 But it\u2019s been going on for too long now. We\u2019ve got a block of six weeks where they\u2019re one win.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo things are being judged and assessed harsher. It\u2019s up to this group to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dual premiership Kangaroo David King has questioned whether Geelong is \u201cout of tickets\u201d, exposing an alarming number of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-796467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}