For the first time in 77 games the Cats were the younger side, and it gave the coach Chris Scott a chance to see what the future of the club looks like.
"The young players in our team give us great reason for optimism, so I'm pretty philosophical about it," Scott said.
Geelong kicked five goals and 11 behinds in the opening half to give Richmond the lead, with the uncharacteristic poor conversion a talking point.
"This is not saying Richmond had good luck, but I just thought we had some bad luck sometimes, just rub of the green didn't go our way, the bounce of the ball, that sort of thing.
"But if you get a little more sophisticated than that and you look at the players in our team, (Esava) Ratugolea's played every game but he's still a new player to our team, certainly in that position, and he was fantastic. I thought (Tanner) Bruhn was good, I thought Jhye Clark when he came on, we got to see little patches of what he's going to be.
"There's a lot that we'll take away from the game and be positive about."
The Cats coach is optimistic about getting several players back from injury in the coming weeks, including captain Patrick Dangerfield, pressure forward Tyson Stengle and premiership defender Jack Henry all possibilities for next week's match against Fremantle.
