Bomber's dreams bested

GEELONG coach Mark Thompson says the Cats have rediscovered their defensive grunt in their 'sweet' 135-point victory over the West Coast Eagles at Subiaco Oval.

A ten goal third quarter blitz, and another virtuoso performance by Brownlow medal favourite Gary Ablett, lifted the Cats to their biggest ever win over the West Coast.

Thompson rated the performance as being up with the best he’s been involved with at Geelong.

“To win by 135 points interstate against West Coast, which is a pretty proud club, is a great effort and we’ve had some horrible days here over the years so we were pretty pleased to take that,” Thompson said.

 “We planned all week thinking that West Coast were going to come out and be really competitive for a long part of the game.

“We never in our wildest dreams thought we’d win by that much and I thought the boys played extremely well.

“It’s sweet. It’s great to see a group of guys play so well for a large period of time.”

Thompson said Geelong’s loss to Collingwood in round nine had seen the side return to the defensive pressure that was the cornerstone of its 2007 premiership assault.

“Since then they seemed to have turned a bit of a corner and got back to playing the footy that was similar to what we were playing last year,” Thompson said.

“That’s something we’ve been very good at over a long period of time. It’s sort of been missing for parts of this year but that should almost be what you build your game from and tonight it was outstanding.

“Something’s clicked with the players and certainly their performances have been improving and tonight -- well as a coach you can’t ask for too much more than that.”

While Ablett again stole the show with a dazzling 37 possessions and two goals, Thompson was quick to highlight the outstanding performances across the team.

“He’s probably playing the best he can play at the moment and that’s a big, big compliment - he’s just been in outstanding form,” Thompson said.

“But there was a lot of contributors today and he’s playing in a good team - Paul Chapman (5 goals), Cam Mooney (5 goals), Andrew Mackie - there were a lot of very, very good players out there tonight.”

Thompson reserved some special praise for his back six led by an outstanding performance by skipper Tom Harley, who controlled the aerial duels, and veteran Darren Milburn.

Geelong now has a week off and Thompson confirmed that Matthew Scarlett and Matthew Stokes would return to the side to face Adelaide.