EELONG coach Chris Scott said season 2023 felt more like "whack-a-mole" than football at times, after a line was put through the reigning premier's season.
The Cats lost to a nearly finals-bound St Kilda by 33 points on Saturday night to miss September action for just the second time in Scott's 13 years in charge.
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"It's been a really frustrating year. We haven't really been able to get going at all, it's felt like whack-a-mole to an extent. And tonight was a bit the same, it was reflective of our season," Scott said.
"We were beaten all over the ground. Even though we've been struggling, I don't think there's ever been a situation where I thought our players have given up, it all just really caught up with us tonight.
"There were patches throughout the year where it felt like we had got going, two or three things would go wrong again, and we'd be catching up. The reality is for us at the moment – even if we'd won tonight, we're just not going well enough."
The Cats were without a number of their talls against St Kilda, including Mark Blicavs, Rhys Stanley, Jon Ceglar, Jack Henry and forward Gary Rohan, as well as best and fairest Cam Guthrie, and Scott said the team simply ran out of ways to paper over the gaps.
"There will be time for a thorough analysis. But we thought we were going really well in the pre-season, then we lost all our defenders in one go, and Tom Stewart hurt his knee 15 minutes into round one. It's not so much those injuries or issues in isolation, it's what it means for the flow-on," he said.
"We had a really good run towards the end of last year, where we got everyone back and playing really well, and this year, we had guys playing who for various reasons couldn't play their best.
"We've felt like we've needed to chase things in terms of the way we play, that in hindsight, have been a little bit desperate, where we just weren't going well enough. The best teams – and it was the way we felt last year – don't need to invent anything, the way we play will work against anyone. That hasn't been the case for us for a long time.
"And sometimes when you try to do that, you can fall apart a little bit, which it felt like at times this year, we've felt disorganised because we're trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat."
