In the first two rounds of the season the Cats have had to fight back, after starting poorly on both occasions against Hawthorn and North Melbourne.
Billie Smedts realises that the results could have been very different if play hadn’t changed in the second half.
“We could quite easily be zero wins and two losses, so we need to fix a couple of things up,” Smedts said.
“We’ve got the belief that we can do it, we don’t know why we’re doing it to ourselves.”
Together, the players have sat down with senior coach, Chris Scott, to identify which areas need to improve, in order to avoid a similar scenario against Carlton on Saturday night.
“We’ve gone through it pretty heavily and looked at it really closely,” Smedts explained.
“We’ve picked out a couple of things but I suppose he’s (Chris Scott) just asked the question, why are we starting poorly?”
“It's no secret to anyone, we had the same problem last year, and we’re going to look at fixing that up this week against Carlton.”
Playing along side the older players only encourages Smedts to perform well. He acknowledges that the younger guys, including him, need to take ownership of their role to help the team win.
“As a young bloke you definitely walk taller when you’re playing along side (the likes of) Joel Selwood and Jimmy Bartel, and you know what your going to get from those blokes each week… and it’s up to us young boys to help them win games.”
To increase his chances of achieving a sound career, Smedts, hopes to become a multi-positional player that the club can rely on.
“Definitely to be a multi-positional player because that will help my chances of playing each week,”Smedts said.
“If I fall out of form as a one position player it’s hard to keep that position, but it’s easier to swing around on the ground and play each week.”
The one part of Smedts' game that he hopes to work on, is his consistency on game day.
“For me it’s consistency, I suppose against Hawthorn I had an alright game, and against the Roos I struggled a little bit,” Smedts said.
“The thing for me this year, is to try and bridge the gap between a good and a bad game and play some consistent football.”
“Last year I was playing that defensive forward role and I’m trying to pick up where I finished off last year, bringing a lot of forward line pressure.
“For me a good game is maybe 10 touches and 10 tackles.”
Smedts goes on to say how much the club still relies on the older players, including 31 year old Paul Chapman.
“As I said, those older players just stand up when the team needs them, it’s why people can never count us out of games because we do have those greats that never give up, and when the pressures there they really do stand up,” Smedts explained.
The Cats knew they had a tough start to the season playing a number of quality sides early, and Smedts confirms that a successful start to the season is important to the club.
“Our first four rounds, we knew were going to be really tough and that’s why we took NAB Cup really seriously because we wanted to be playing our best football when the season started,” Smedts said.
