As Geelong captain Patrick Dangerfield assessed the wreckage stemming from a Brisbane blitz, the disappointment at a premiership gone begging was evident all across the Cats rooms as he spoke.
From a phenomenal preliminary final performance against Hawthorn, the Geelong champion suffered a similar fate to many of his mates at the MCG on Saturday when mauled when it mattered most. And the hurt was both physical and emotional.
The disappointment was evident in Dangerfield’s eyes as, behind him, Coleman Medallist Jeremy Cameron – a family man to the core, jogged around entertaining his daughter while using his jumper as a sling for his injured right arm.
“The best part of the game is when you are victorious but, equally, when you are on the losing ledger of that, that is the game, isn’t it? We didn’t execute as well as we would have liked to today,” Dangerfield said.
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“You risk the ultimate devastation and that is what, behind the walls behind you, that’s what the feeling is. But that shows how much it means.
“It’s a ruthless sport.
“It’s the best sport in the world – I think we can all agree on that. But you do risk the devastation, but it’s worth putting yourself out there and giving it a crack.”
Some losing rooms after grand finals are deathly in their silence, with the mourning rendering players and families mute. Despite the second half blast, this was not necessarily the case with the Geelong, perhaps given the number of kids running around wearing the numbers of their parents and heroes on their backs.
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For them, this was just another day out with dad.
After watching their rivals being lauded on the MCG, Geelong coach Chris Scott and Cats chief executive Steve Hocking were the first to exit the famous stadium and head into the rooms as family members waited near the race for players.
Dangerfield led them off, with former skipper Joel Selwood among the crew but dressed in a suit instead.
The applause they received was muted but significant. It will serve as no consolation to the Cats in coming days, but it is no mean feat to reach a grand final, even if failing to pull it off in the decider hurts most of all.
Ruckman Rhys Stanley was the first to reach for one of his children as he walked into the rooms, a move that prompted several of his teammates to do the same.
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On entering, the players headed into another internal room for one last address from Scott, who is renowned for resetting immediately after a season and pointing to the future.
As midfielder Tom Atkins said, there is no point dwelling on the past for too long, particularly when it is painful loss.
“He just said there has to be one loser. We don’t apologise for putting ourselves at the pointy end every year,” Atkins said.
“I can still remember Joel (Selwood) saying that when he was captain, and it still rings true. You know, there has to be 17 losers and in times like these, sometimes you wish you had missed the finals.
“But we don’t want to feel that way. We want to put ourselves up there every year. We want to compete and give ourselves the opportunity to achieve greatness. So we did that this year.
“We had a really, really good season but at the end of the day, Brisbane got on top and they were too good. We’ll go again next year and we’ll try and put ourselves up the pointy end again.”
Atkins and Dangerfield, among other Cats, still firmly believed they were a strong chance of winning the premiership at three-quarter time, despite trailing by 19 points. But they did not have the muscle to go with Brisbane in the final term.
The duo and Mark Blicavs were the only Cats willing to discuss what had unfolded on the MCG with anyone other than their coaches and their families, and understood that football provides no guarantees of reaching the decider again.
“When you make it this far and then you don’t quite execute, you don’t need to throw everything away,” Dangerfield said.
“That can be the external noise but fundamentally, there’s a few shifts here and there, some areas we didn’t quite execute today that we’ve executed so well throughout the season, so it’s not all doom and gloom in terms of the bigger picture, in terms of what we need to go after and what we need to improve.
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“It’s refining what we’ve already done, and we’ve done it for so much of the year. We just unfortunately weren’t able to do that today.”
As the kids started booting the Sherrins around the room, the Cats began wrapping up and preparing for their post-match consolation dinner.
Those functions tend to be flatter than a pancake, not least because they will serve as a farewell for some.
There were a few Cats in the rooms who will not be there next season, including former captain and current assistant coach Steven King, who was appointed senior coach of Melbourne midway through September.
The former ruckman looked as disappointed as anyone as Scott and his assistant coaches emerged from the internal meeting room to grab family members and bring them back inside the inner-sanctum about 6.15pm.
All the while Cameron, who was nursing a mid-strength ale alongside his right arm, kept entertaining his daughter Macey, who had her dad’s number on jumper emblazoned in glitter.
She did not care about the flag. She just wanted hot chips.
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