Bulldogs senior coach, Brendan McCartney, says his team has changed significantly since their last meeting with the Cats at Simonds Stadium in 2012.

“We haven’t been down there much in my time, only once and we were a really young team and it feels like 20 years ago, the team has totally transformed and matured,” McCartney told www.westernbulldogs.com.au

Despite the Cats troubles interstate and second half blunders, McCartney says Geelong still remains one of the hardest sides to beat in the competition.

“They’ve played a lot of strong clubs in the last five or six weeks, the powerhouses of the competition. I’ve gone well past ever underestimating that group of players and that club and putting too many labels on what they can and can’t do,” McCartney explained.  

“Not many people have a good record against Geelong in the last 10 years. I don’t think there would be many clubs that would say they beat them regularly.”

With this the Dogs have done their research and McCartney believes his team is equipped for the contest that looms ahead at the Cattery.

“We want to go down there and compete and we’re confident of playing some good footy,” McCartney said.  

“We’ll go down there knowing how they play; they play the ground very well, they’ve got very experienced defenders and they’ve got people around the ball who know what to do.

“It’s well documented that they bring young players into the team who have been trained up the right way and are ready to go.

“So it’s a challenge but we’re looking forward to the challenge of our whole club going down there with the VFL team playing first, it’s going to be like the old days.

Although the Bulldogs have accumulated a large team of former Cats over the years, McCartney says game structures change too quickly for it to be a game changing advantage.

“Probably not, I’ve been away from the club for four years and Matty (Scarlett) and Moons (Cameron Mooney) haven’t been there for quite some time,” McCartney said.

“Joel (Corey) obviously has (retiring from Geelong last year) but things move quite quickly.”

“There are some things about the Geelong Footy Club that have been there for a long time but as players move on and come and go the game changes and they play a little bit different.”  

This Sunday at Simonds Stadium the VFL curtain raiser will kick off between Geelong and Footscray at 1pm before the seniors hit the stage at 4:40pm.