“I just think you take a Next Dance approach, every season is the next opportunity to give it a crack to win it. That’s the best thing about being involved in Geelong, the list management gives us an opportunity every year to win. And they will be the first every year to put their hand up when we do get to a stag where [we can’t compete for a flag].

“We are not at that stage now, we might be a few steps back, but I don’t feel like that’s any time soon for us [falling out of contention].

“We needed luck to win the grand final, and we didn’t have a whole heap last year with injuries. It’s never just black and white I don’t think. I think we are still very much in the window everyone talks about.

“There were plenty of stories written when I came in ’16 that we had a three-year window and then that’s shut. So many clubs sell youth, I am not buying youth. Youth is absolutely a part, but it is the now.

“That’s (youth is) just buying yourself time to escape criticism, or you can just say no we are going to let it all hang out and give it a go, and you can criticise us if you like, but we are going to have a crack. And that’s what we are doing.

“As a player that is what you want to be involved in, and I still feel like our older players are bloody good players. There’s a balance of bringing in youth and exposing it to the level, absolutely, but you have still got to earn your way. It’s a healthy balance there you can find.”

Cam Guthrie’s quad injury – which was confirmed on Tuesday – will sideline him for at about 10 weeks and will create an opening for one midfield spot for the next generation.

For both the older players and the young the Cats changed their training program this summer to be heavily focused on repeat explosive bursts.

“It’s not necessarily speed, what we have done is high-volume explosion to speed. Speed in AFL lingo is plus 24kmh, and you can blab on about the science but higher exposure to high speed theoretically means it bulletproofs you for when you play a game where your loading is not higher than what you have been training, it’s almost a downgrade on what your training speed has been,” Dangerfield said.

“I remember the first session I had in the off season, literally not training at the club but the off season, and it was just this speed exposure I had never had before and I thought how are the hammies going to hold up to it? It’s like anything, you do enough of it and you become conditioned to it.

“The proof will be in the pudding but it feels like we are in a good spot.”