One positive to come out of Saturday’s 16-point loss to Geelong was the outstanding form of young centre-half forward Travis Cloke, who spoke to CTV after the match.

The 20-tear-old has emerged in 2007 as one of Collingwood’s most important players and indeed one of the most dangerous key forwards in the competition, and against the Cats only enhanced his growing reputation with four goals, 20 disposals and 10 telling marks.

Cloke posed a constant threat to the Geelong defence with his surging leads, strong hands and booming left foot.

“It was very disappointing from a team perspective. Personally I played quite well and kicked straight for once, so that was good to see, but very disappointing for Geelong to get over us in the end,” he told CTV in the rooms after the game.

Cloke has certainly started to improve his goal kicking accuracy in recent weeks, typified by his performance on Saturday which yielded 4.1 including three awesome long bombs from outside 50.

He puts it down to simply not worrying too much about the process.

“You look at the goals, grab the footy and just kick it, so I think that’s the best thing and that’s what I’m trying to incorporate into my goal kicking.

“So it seems to be working, but also a new pair of boots this week, so hopefully that was the key," he said with a wry smile.

When asked what parts of his game he has improved to take his game to the next level which he has clearly done, Cloke said hard work during the pre-season has really paid dividends.

“Definitely my goal kicking, that’s what I worked on a fair bit over the pre-season this year, but my endurance, my stamina has increased a lot.

“I put a fair bit of work in this pre-season, in Arizona and also when we returned in January and February this year.”

While a 16-point loss to the form team of the competition may not seem disastrous, Cloke was frank in assessing the side’s performance, but is confident the team is capable of matching it with the best.

“We’re not too far, but that’s up there with our worst game this year. Mick was pretty upset with the way we played.

“But we’ve always got next week, that’s the best thing about football, and hopefully we can come out and play well against Essendon back here next week.”