Geelong coach Mark Thompson insists the Cats' era of domination is not over and the club's premiership window remains open despite Friday night's heavy preliminary final loss to Collingwood.
The Cats were totally outplayed by a younger, faster more enterprising side determined to better Geelong's outstanding achievements of the past three seasons which include two premierships from three grand finals.
But Thompson believes the Cats are not done with yet.
"I don't think it has to be over," he said.
"I don't think we'll lose too many players and I think we've got some good young players that we want to play."
"Naturally some players will retire and some players will come in and I still think we've got quality coming in and I still think our age at the core of the group is healthy."
Thompson agreed his team was made to look slow in the first term in particular when Collingwood set up their win with seven goals to Geelong's one.
"The two times we've played them in the last six weeks they've outrun us clearly and outplayed us," he said.
"We're not the quickest team but ... I think they just played better as a team."
"It's a bit of reality check when you come up against a side that plays a first quarter like that."
"We've got to go back and maybe just change the way we play a bit, but we probably knew that at the start of the year - we just haven't had the total buy-in from the playing group, really."
Thompson said he was none the wiser about Gary Ablett's intentions but hinted that he's resigned to losing his best player to the Gold Coast Suns who have a multi-million dollar offer on the table.
"We would love him to stay, but we just don't know," said Thompson.
"We clearly, absolutely have no idea which way it's going to go."
"He was probably one of our better players, he looked like he was on the move and won a bit of the ball."
Thompson said it was clear from Friday night's match that the Cats' game plan would need to change to meet new challenges posed by the likes of Collingwood and St Kilda.
"The game has changed in three or four years, but this one, we've hit a bit of a hurdle with it," he said.
"I've just spoken to the players and they understand, they know exactly where they're at."
"I've got a lot of confidence that they will be able to change because they've been able to do it over and over again."
"All of a sudden this year we've got a new super team that plays this brand of footy that's come from nowhere - everything evolves."