UPON reflection, Melbourne’s Round 17 loss made perfect sense to Simon Goodwin.

His side, which fell 28 points short of the Cats on Thursday night, was beaten in some key categories which made scoring incredibly difficult.

“They dominated a number of areas,” Goodwin said post-game.

“I said yesterday heading in that you get a good audit on your game [against Geelong], and we got that tonight.

“They dominated the time in half, they beat us at clearance, I think they were cleaner, and they tackled incredibly well around contest areas.

“We’ll learn a lot from this, but full credit to Geelong – they played an exceptional game.

The stats told the story which Goodwin alluded to, with the Demons creating 20 less inside 50s due to a breakdown in the centre of the ground.

“It’s an area that we’d like to be better at, there’s no question about that,” the Dees’ coach said.

“Not too often you go minus 18 or 20 at clearance and obviously centre bounce was a bit of an issue.

“This is a ground where if you give up territory it’s very hard to get it out of your [defensive] 50.

“Geelong are a very good forward half side.

“We gave them that territory and we paid the price.”

Geelong was stronger on the inside with plus eight tackles and one-percenters, while controlling the outside with 38 more uncontested marks.

“They tackled very well around clearance,” Goodwin said.

“We got our hands on it enough from first possession perspective, but their ability to tackle, pressure and as I said, I think they were just cleaner in and around the scrimmage, stoppage.

“They got some momentum and surge out of those contest areas.

“That was a big part of the game – they won territory from clearance and they won those metres.

“That put us under enormous pressure.”

Watch Goodwin’s full post-game review below.