Coach Mark Thompson admits Geelong will have to adopt a slightly different approach in order to overcome Carlton on Friday night, having lost the two most recent battles between the clubs.
In Round 19 last year the Blues prevailed by 35 points at the MCG and earlier this year in Round 5 they claimed the points again at the same venue, this time by 36 points, when Jeff Garlett booted three goals, Eddie Betts and Chris Yarran two each and Setanta O'hAilpin one.
Much was made of the success the three small forwards had in that game, as it was when little men Adam Schneider (four goals), Jack Steven (three), Stephen Milne (two) and Nick Dal Santo booted all the goals in St Kilda's win in the grand final rematch in Round 13.
Thompson agreed that a focus this week will be on changing things up a little in order to deal with the Carlton small forwards, even coach Brett Ratten said Yarran is unlikely to be recalled to a team that has won handsomely in the past fortnight.
"We make some changes and basically play the way we want to play," Thompson said.
"Obviously the last two times we've gone to play them we haven't implemented the plan that well."
"We haven't played great footy so we're looking to build on last week and to have four consistent quarters of football leading into the finals."
"That's our plan so that's all we really want to focus on."
Part of the game plan to prevent the Blues' crumbing forwards having as big an impact revolves around stationing defenders closer to goal.
"I think the thing with the little fellas that have been getting us, they've been running backwards towards their goal and really opened us up," he added.
"So we're going to try and make it hard for Carlton to be able to kick the ball over our head and hopefully we've got better structure in place so that we don't have our defenders turned around and that's probably the biggest part of that."
With the Cats' VFL team to miss the finals this year their final game comes this weekend with that competition headed towards its playoffs a week earlier than the AFL and Thompson knows that makes it tougher on his men approaching September.
But the dual premiership coach is hopeful of finding a solution to keep his fringe players' match fitness up should they be required.
"I think us and St Kilda are the only teams in the top eight that won't have some players playing after this weekend so it'd be nice to be able to play some form of football, whether it's a competitive game or a shorter game, a game with less numbers but just a physical hit-out would be great," Thompson said.
"We have to plan thinking that we're going to go all the way to the last weekend of September, the 25th, and that's five weeks of matches."
"It would be unfair to play someone on September 25 who hasn't played for four games, that's a long time."
"So we have to try and keep their match fitness up somehow so that's the theory behind it all."