Bombers coach Natalie Wood said that the Cats "really flexed their muscle" early in the contest and their pressure and hunger around the ball was superb. 

"We just didn't have the answers for the number of players that Geelong had who really stood up today," Wood said. 

"They were sweating on everything we were doing."

Wood said the club was proud of what they had achieved in just their second season in the AFLW competition. 

"We are still building; we are really proud of where we got to today even though we hoped to put up a better contest than what we did," she said. 

"The phrase we just used in [the changerooms] was proud and hungry. 

"We set out with a mission to play finals, which every team does, but we want to be in a position to win finals and today we didn't put ourselves in that position.

"We can sit back and acknowledge the growth that we've had, but we're really competitive and focussed, we want to still be playing over the next couple of weeks.

"One of the things that's been quite inspiring for me as a coach is that last year when we got to round 10 we were cooked, we couldn't have imagined being able to play finals because of the energy levels and the levels of fatigue, whereas this season, yes there's some exhaustion but it does feel like we are growing with our ability to keep going for more weeks which is a really pleasing sign for the growth of the group."