Geelong coach Chris Scott says the Cats didn’t need Sunday’s embarrassing AFL fade-out against Brisbane to know they’re not playing how they want, but it might help ram the message home.

While the Gabba loss to the Lions – after leading by 52 points late in the third quarter – was just Geelong’s second defeat of the season, Scott said no one at the club had been fooling themselves that the Cats’ previous form had been good enough.

“It’s a little bit more real,” Scott told reporters on Tuesday.

“I would like to think that we haven’t been kidding ourselves – players, coaches included.

“… We’ve played some great football at times, but the bottom line is it’s been inconsistent and inconsistent footy is not sustainable.

“We’ve been defensively poor at times and that culminated in an extremely bad quarter of footy.

“So longer term hopefully we’ll look back and say ‘Yeah, it helped us.’

“But personally I don’t subscribe to the theory that it was ‘a loss you needed to have’.

“It’s like ‘The recession you needed to have,’ it’s not right.”

While the second-placed Cats have statistically only the AFL’s 10th best defensive record, Scott said all aspects of their game needed work.

He was confident the inconsistencies could be ironed out as the season progressed, but added the Cats were working to address them immediately, not hoping everything would just click come finals time.

“It would be folly to look too far ahead and say when the heat’s really on that we’ll come to the party,” Scott said.

“We’re concentrating on today and tomorrow.”

The next two rounds will provide as good a test as there is, with Geelong facing third-placed Fremantle on Saturday night and top-placed Hawthorn a week later.

“If we win we’ll know that we’ve played well,” he said.

Scott won’t be swinging the selection axe in response to Sunday’s defeat, but said Billie Smedts, Josh Caddy, Mitch Brown and Jed Bews were making claims with strong VFL form.