Geelong captain Joel Selwood’s fortunes have mirrored those of his AFL team in the past couple of weeks.

With Selwood and star recruit Patrick Dangerfield forming a dynamite combination in the midfield, the Cats bolted out of the blocks in 2016, winning seven of their first eight matches and assuming premiership favouritism.

But upset losses in the last two rounds to Collingwood and Carlton have seen Sydney take over the top line of flag betting.

Selwood has been effectively tagged in the two losses by Magpie Levi Greenwood and Carlton’s Ed Curnow.

The skipper nominated poor goalkicking and the continued concession of unnecessary free kicks as two areas the Cats need to get right, with Saturday’s visit of Steve Johnson and the GWS Giants to Simonds Stadium shaping as another tough challenge.

“I’d like to be playing better, along with a number of other guys in the footy side,” Selwood said on Wednesday.

“That’s a small part of it and I’ll make sure I get that right.”

Selwood echoed the words of Geelong coach Chris Scott that the Cats had probably been over-rated externally due to their flying start to the campaign.

“We haven’t proven anything yet and probably the only side that has is (three-time defending champions) Hawthorn,” he said.

“They’ve been pretty impressive in what they’ve done and they’re still getting the wins to date.

“We’ll just worry about ourselves.

“We think we can be a good side when we put things together.

“When we’re not, we’ve got to fix those things up.”

Geelong’s only defeat in the opening eight rounds was a first-ever loss to GWS in early April.

On that occasion, the Giants jumped to an early lead in Canberra and held strong to win by 13 points.

“We didn’t play overly well through the midfield,” said Selwood.

“They got a lot of clearance numbers on us which is something we will look at thoroughly this week and look to improve.”