1. Regardless of where or when you play, if you go for 90 minutes without a goal it’s going to be ugly. At quarter-time the West Coast players and coaching staff would have been reasonably happy, but the final three quarters failed to produce a goal, while the Cats went on a rampage. The Cattery is football’s strongest home ground advantage and from that moment forward West Coast had no answers.

2. The depth of West Coast was tested and it came up short. With quality players like Luke Shuey, Mark LeCras, Darren Glass and Chris Masten ruled out with injury – and to then lose Matt Rosa, arguably the team’s most outstanding contributor across the first three games – the Eagles were up against it. And they didn’t really cope. Rosa was battling a gastric bug at the team hotel while his teammates were eclipsed by Geelong.

3. The West Coast Eagles coaching staff had enjoyed an unbeaten run through the pre-season series and in the first three weeks of the season. There were some great signs in those games, so a flat performance was not a complete surprise. Adam Simpson and his match committee would have learned a great deal out of this encounter, will take those lessons forward and continue to build through the 2014 campaign.

4. West Coast has been more than satisfied with the new faces who have been injected into the team in the first month of the season and again Jamie Bennell, Elliot Yeo and Xavier Ellis were strong contributors. All played in the back half, which was under siege after quarter-time, and all of them performed their tasks admirably. Bennell, in particular, provided exciting rebound and sound defensive skills.

5. Geelong has been one of the quality outfits of the AFL for the best part of a decade and showed why that was the case with a clinical display of team football. They have great understanding, developed over a long period of playing a lot of football together, and set a benchmark to which the Eagles must aspire.