ASKING Geelong players if a week off at this stage of the season is good is like asking if Stevie J enjoys kicking goals. The answer is an obvious yes.

While the Geelong players took the reward and full advantage of winning the qualifying final, West Coast advanced to the preliminary final the hard way - literally and practically.

For those who saw West Coast’s semi-final win over Carlton - as most of the Geelong squad did via the television - in such a bruising, battling, physical encounter, the week off got better and better for Geelong the more the game wore on.

“Definitely,” Geelong fullback Matthew Scarlett said, “No doubt they will pull up pretty sore from it, but they’ve travelled pretty well all year. I guess West Coast won’t do much and it will be all about recovery for them and for us we’ll be able to get a little bit of work done on the track.

“Because we had the weekend off we’ll be able to get a little bit of work done this week. You don’t train too hard, but you like to feel good about yourself and do a little bit of skill work on the track and a bit of game-based stuff and tactics. Our sessions this week should be upbeat because all the guys are feeling good. It’s an exciting week.”

Indeed, Geelong’s week will be about polishing skills and making sure the tactics, game plan and intelligence about the Eagles, who have made a remarkable turn around from last season, is as accurate as possible.

That said, the Cats will not be obsessed with the Eagles in the build-up, preferring to place a much greater emphasis on what they want to do to win the game rather than getting too caught up by what West Coast might do.

“I’d say it’s 90 per cent on us and 10 per cent on the opposition,” Scarlett said of the tactical breakdown. We review the opposition the same way every week. We go through that during our main meeting on a Wednesday and we’ll spend about 10-15 minutes on how they play, watch a few edits on their strengths and weaknesses. After that it’s straight back on to us and what we have to do.

“How we play doesn’t change much from week to week. We know what works for us and we know if we go away from our game plan we come back to the field and become an average side. We make slight adjustments, but we tend to try to play the same way. We know how West Coast play and they know how we play so it’s about who executes on the day.”

The only time Geelong and West Coast met this season, the Eagles did the better executing and inflicted one of the three defeats suffered by the Cats and perhaps provided a quiet nudge in the ribs.

That loss at Patersons Stadium certainly had a sobering effect in Geelong and it will serve a purpose again this weekend for the Cats to know they cannot have one iota of complacency or over-confidence going into the game at the MCG.

“We’re under no illusions that we’re coming up against a great side,” Scarlett said. “It is just a terrific footy club that has had a great season and they’ve improved a lot and full credit to them. They were too good for us on the night and hopefully we can get turn it around.”

Cats fans can only hope that weekend off will indeed help Geelong to achieve that turnaround that Scarlett speaks of.