Since the end of last year the Cats have been determined to secure a solid start to the season, and Jimmy Bartel hopes to fix many more wins against quality teams, by playing the Geelong way from start to finish.
Whilst it’s very early days in the season, Bartel sees the younger player’s potential as one of their biggest assets.
“You always (want to) take wins against quality sides like Hawthorn and North Melbourne no matter what time of year they are,” Bartel told 3AW.
“Probably the biggest thing is that we have a lot of potential there, and I guess we’re going to find out as the year roles along how much that potential can take us throughout the year.”
“We’ve certainly got a lot of young guys who are learning and hopefully our senior guys can keep the ship steady while they really progress.”
Mathew Stokes produced a record breaking performance as Geelong’s sub, raking in 16 possessions over one and a half quarters, after taking to the field only halfway through the third term.
Bartel confirmed that Stokes’ energy injected them with the endurance they needed, but he assured that this wouldn’t become Stokes main role every week.
“No, I don’t think he’ll be sub next week…” Bartel said.
“He was exactly what we needed, he gave us a huge amount of spark, especially around the contest, where we were probably doing a lot of hard work inside but we weren’t really finishing it off.”
“Stokesy really gave us the delivery that we really needed.”
So far the Cats have never lost a game against the Blues at Etihad stadium and Bartel is confident they can continue the streak.
However, he’s aware of Carlton’s powerful midfield and their ability to play hard football. He believes the only way for the Cats to come out on top, is to play the Geelong way and perform high quality football from the very first bounce.
“We are confident if we play the Geelong way, not like we’ve been playing in the first half in the first two games, that we can certainly be good enough to beat a quality side like Carlton,” Bartel explained.
“Carlton do pose a lot of problems for us, we’ve seen it in the past that they’ve got some really zippy forwards who manage to kick a few goals against us, they’ve got one of the best midfields running around.”
“We are well aware of how good Carlton are and it’s certainly not going to be easy.”
