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Jenkins: Cats will go backwards in 2026
Connor Scanlon • December 24th, 2025 3:03 pm
The Geelong Cats won 17 games in the 2025 home-and-away season, but how many will they win in 2026?
Many bookmakers have Geelong's 2026 season wins line set at 15.5 – a market settled on total season wins across the 2026 regular home-and-away season.
2008 Brownlow Medallist Adam Cooney believes the Cats will win over 15.5 games next season and even predicted that they will most likely finish in the top four.
“They won't get any worse, they never do,” Cooney told The Run Home.
“I've attempted to say that this is it (in the past), surely they're going to drop away, but they don't.
“The coach has been re-signed for another few years, they know what they're doing down there.
“I think Jeremy Cameron will drop slightly in form, but Shannon Neale will elevate.
“So, 15.5, that's about where they sit just every year, isn't it? It’s a flip of the coin.
“I'll say over, although it hasn't been quite the fortress that it has been at GMHBA, but they generally win most of their home games down there which is a huge advantage for them.
“They'll probably be in the top four again.”
Former Cat Josh Jenkins couldn’t agree though, believing that Geelong’s key players performed at the peak of their powers in 2025, making that form hard to replicate again.
While the ex-forward admitted that the Cats’ floor is “incredibly high”, too much can go wrong in 2026 for the team to achieve over 15.5 wins again.
“I just think there's enough scope or enough room for error here that they might go backwards a little bit,” Jenkins said.
“I mean, Cameron had a year that a forward, in terms of goal kicking, hasn't had in a little while. I thought (Bailey) Smith and (Max) Holmes played as well as they can really play.
“The floor is incredibly high, I just don't know if the ceiling is as high as it was last year, and that's why if you're a Cats fan, that might have been the Premiership that got away.
“It's fascinating, I'll take the under just because it's a reasonably high line and not much needs to go wrong for you to go under.”
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