Geelong maintained its unbeaten record with a hard-fought win against Collingwood on Saturday night, but Chris Scott says the Cats must improve considerably if they are to compete with reigning premier Hawthorn.
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Scott's side may have the same number of wins as the Hawks, but the coach said there was a huge gap between the performances of the two teams.
"We're really aware, especially after watching [the Hawks on Friday] night, that we need to improve a lot," Scott said of Hawthorn's demolition of Fremantle.
"The one piece I could glean from Friday night's game is that there is one team that is clearly ahead of the next best, but it's round three. Unfortunately we've got to play them in two weeks so we'll need to improve quickly.
"I don't think this game was anywhere near [the quality] of that one. Even the team that lost (Fremantle) was still probably better than us in parts I thought. We're 3-0, but to be frank it doesn't really feel like it right at the moment.
"The positive is that the win-loss looks good, but we've still got a lot of work to do on our game."
Scott singled out Tom Lonergan for his outstanding job in keeping Pies' danger man Travis Cloke goalless and was happy with his defence as a "collective", despite admitting he felt like the Cats had to scrap and fight to stay in the game at times.
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley was also pleased with his defensive unit, but lamented his onballers' inability to win first possession.
"We lost the midfield battle quite convincingly across the four quarters," Buckley said.
"Minus 12 for inside 50s, about the same for contested possessions. The weight of ball ended up telling against us.
"I thought our defence held up really well. I thought we were nutted in midfield. I thought our forwards lacked supply. You're not going to win many games with 11 goals. You're not going to kick many winning scores with just 42 entries."
