The word “disappointing” is perhaps best used to describe Geelong’s 13-point loss to Greater Western Sydney on Sunday.

After an emphatic victory over Hawthorn on Easter Monday, the Cats were brought right back down to earth by the young Giants in Canberra less than a week later – and as the siren sounded, it was that one word which was clearly written on the face of every player in navy and white.

“It was very disappointing,” midfielder Mark Blicavs lamented post-match.

“We wanted to back up our performance last week against the Hawks and we weren’t able to. Just very disappointed.”

The Cats were well beaten in the clearances 39-26 and lost the contested ball count 148-126 – numbers both Blicavs and his captain Joel Selwood feel embarrassed by as on-ballers.

“We got beaten comprehensively,” Selwood said.

“They won the inside battle and then took it outside. They’ve got a midfield that did get on top of us and we need to be better.”

“I thought they moved the ball really cleanly with their hands and our ball movement was no good,” Blicavs added.

“We just fumbled a bit, our hands weren’t clean enough, we didn’t apply enough pressure to them and we didn’t hit our tackles.”

The Cats will now be forced to wait a week to avenge their loss with a much-improved performance against Brisbane at home.

The Lions suffered a heavy defeat in Perth at the hands of the West Coast Eagles in the opening round but were certainly plucky against North Melbourne in round two, meaning Geelong won’t be permitted to hit cruise control on Sunday.

“It’s our first home game at Simonds and we’ll recover, go through this game in great depth and then prepare for Brisbane,” Blicavs said.

“They were very good in the first half against North [Melbourne] and brought a lot of heat – so we’re going to have to be right on and much better than we were today.”

“We’ll go away and be very hard on ourselves, which I think we need to be.”