With Geelong about to board a plane to Sydney to face the Swans, here's what geelongcats.com.au will be keeping their eyes on this weekend.

All eyes on… Gary Rohan

It was probably more like all eyes off  Gary Rohan last week.

With Tom Hawkins and Jeremy Cameron to worry about, the bouncy small forward will now get the opposition’s third-best defender, and we saw the results of that on the weekend.

He’s a barometer in a lot of ways, Rohan, and the stats back it up: in the eight games #23 has kicked three or more goals, the Cats have never lost. Footy isn’t always that simple but the stats don’t lie.

So, while individually Cameron delivered on his debut, structurally Cats looked a far more powerful until forward of the ball with him in the side, and against the Eagles, Rohan was the beneficiary.

The ball seemed to move with a speed and fluidity we haven’t seen all season and it was no accident that we saw 31 scoring shots from 55 entries against the Eagles after ranking 14th according to Champion Data on that measure going into the game. 

All eyes on… Jumping Jack Flash

Before Mitch Duncan’s after the siren barrel last week, the Jordan Clark/Jack Henry Easter Monday match winner was probably the clear clubhouse leader for the Cats’ play of the year so far.

While Clarks’ dash through the middle is what ultimately got Billy Brownless taunting a dejected former Victorian premier from behind the MCC glass, it doesn’t happen without Henry wrongfooting three Hawks, dropping two of them, and freeing up the corridor. It was magnificent.

It’s also the ideal metaphor for the unheralded Henry’s season so far: the ultimate utility doing what the team needs in key moments over and over again.

He’s played at each end of the ground as well as in the ruck, and already has five goals to his name including a very fancy banana in the second quarter that was the sign of a player brimming with confidence, as he should be.

And he’s just signed a three year deal, keeping him at the club until at least the end of 2024.

All eyes on… Where we're at

Judging by the atmosphere at GMHBA Stadium last Saturday, the 97-point win over a fellow contender was just the tonic the faithful needed after a stop-start opening to the season.

It was hard to tell who was enjoying it more, the fans in the stands or the players. Either way, the impact on the ladder alone was significant  - from 8th with a percentage of 99.7% to 4th with a percentage of 123%.

So what does it mean? Has a corner been turned – it certainly looked that way. The Eagles were down a few big names but most would say that a win of that scale says a fair bit more about the winning side than the losers.

We’ll know more around 10 pm on Saturday night, but it goes without saying that 5-2 looks a lot better than 4-3.

Out of interest, the next month looks like this: Richmond, St.Kilda, Gold Coast, and then Collingwood.  With only the Suns at GMHBA.

All eyes on… The Young Bloods

It’s hard to get a read on the young Swans. They took some big scalps and were the talk of the town early in the season with their high energy, high scoring brand of footy, but have hit skids in the last couple of weeks.

They’ll go into this one missing a few big names including Buddy Franklin, Sam Reid, and Tom Hickey, which structurally, are tough losses. Combine that with the Cats’ good record at the SCG, and you’d expect Geelong will go in favourites.

But as all tipsters know, footy isn’t always that simple. Indeed, as Cameron Ling touched on in this week’s To the Final Bell podcast, there’s a school of thought around the Swans having managed a handful of their young stars over the past couple of weeks in order to freshen them up for the Cats clash.

Of course, they would have gone into their last two games expecting to win but young players, especially as young as some of these Swans are, need to be guided through the grind of a full AFL season, and according to Lingy, that’s what may have been happening here. For what it's worth, Scotty Gullan was having none of it. 

It’s tough for any side to cover the loss of their top-level senior players as we saw with West Coast last week, but the Swans younger brigade are very capable at their best so you can expect Chris Scott and his coaching group will fly into Sydney expecting a fight befitting a fourth v fifth clash.