Max Holmes was at his influential best in Geelong’s 77-point win over Essendon at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday.

Holmes found plenty of the football, accumulating a career-high 33 disposals. The 20-year-old was particularly damaging on the outside finishing with a game-high 659 metres gained and connected well with teammates contributing nine score involvements.

His performance drew praise from senior coach Chris Scott post-game.

“I thought he was super tonight,” Scott said.

“He’s a really penetrating player. He has some improvement left within him which is exciting but tonight was a good example of some of the sorts of things that he can do, and there is a bit of a pointed difference in the way he plays in our team compared to some of our other midfielders.

“I loved his game tonight.”

Holmes himself was pleased with the way the team was able to build on last week’s performance against North Melbourne with a dominant four quarter effort against Essendon.

“It was great. We got our game going well and I think we saw the positives of when we string it together and really play for each other”, Holmes told geelongcats.com.au post-game.

“I think everyone really compliments each other when it’s going smoothly. So, it was a fun win.”

“We had a good win last week, but we probably lacked the consistency across four quarters, so I think it was great today to have the opportunity to go again and I think we put in a stronger performance which is nice.

“It (gives) us a good bit of confidence going forward.”

The victory against Essendon moves the Cats up to fifth on the ladder after 18 rounds.

There next challenge coming in a week's time when they travel to Brisbane to play the third-placed Lions at the Gabba on Saturday 22 July at 4.35pm.