AT THE AFL season launch a month or so ago, guests were treated to a superb short film about last year's grand final, the highlight of which comes hours after the final siren as the victorious Geelong players stand contemplating their achievement.

The team bus is waiting to take the Cats to a post-game function, but they stop, walk back up the race and lean on the boundary fence in the dark, absorbing the enormity of it all.

Interviewed later, Joel Corey summed it up: "To actually share a point in time like that (with his teammates) was unbelievable. Just walking back down the race on to the bus, I knew we were forever linked to each other."

If the Geelong midfielder was speaking now, six months later, he'd probably also say that moment was a farewell of sorts because this feted group of players would never be together again. As a team, anyway.

Football never stands still. And even a side roundly hailed as one of the best the game has seen continues to change.

Geelong has changed its personnel. And by consequence, changed its character. The familiar faces are still there. But there are enough fresh ones to make even a side chasing back-to-back premierships a significantly different proposition to the outfit that delivered the first leg of the double.

Today at Skilled Stadium against Sydney, there will be no Steven King, the veteran ruckman traded to St Kilda last summer. No Nathan Ablett, the key forward having lost his appetite for the game and walked away. No Brad Ottens, still recovering from an ankle injury and yet to play a part in the 2008 campaign. And no Shannon Byrnes, the little runner temporarily out of favour.

King and Ottens were the ruck division of that all-conquering 2007 premiership team. But with King gone and Ottens yet to fire a shot, it's been Mark Blake and newcomer Trent West carrying the burden this season, and making a pretty decent fist of it.

Ablett may or may not return. But with a talent the scale of gun youngster Tom Hawkins occupying the goal square, Geelong isn't exactly tearing its hair out about whether he will or won't.

Ryan Gamble has been a revelation for the Cats up forward so far this season, likewise Harry Taylor in defence. Both are out this week, Gamble suspended, Taylor perhaps surprisingly rested, given his efforts last week against St Kilda superstar Nick Riewoldt.

But stepping into the line-up with Andrew Mackie is another fresh face in smart, young midfielder Brent Prismall, a walk-up start in virtually any other team's best 22, but made to bide his time at Skilled Stadium.

There's more in the wings. Hard-working and skilful forward Travis Varcoe, who played 18 games in his debut season and was perhaps unlucky not to win a spot in the grand final team. Jason Davenport, who along with Prismall, was super-impressive in the NAB Cup. Simon Hogan, named as an emergency for today's game. Nathan Djerrkura. And so on.

The newcomers and would-be newcomers aren't just hungry to seize their opportunity, but ravenous. And that appetite is rubbing off on the regulars, the likes of Corey, Jimmy Bartel, Gary Ablett and Cameron Ling all in great form. Once again, the motivation levels for Geelong seemingly have not slipped even a fraction.

"We've got new guys, and some who were on the fringe last year and didn't get to play much senior footy. They tend to be the driving force," skipper Tom Harley observed recently.

"It's those players from about Nos. 15-30 that I think really shape the way the club performs on the training track. There's plenty of hunger across the group because of those guys, so (lack of motivation) hasn't been something that we've had to cross yet."

If the Geelong coaching panel had a convenient pre-season mantra about just how it would approach the mammoth task of winning a second successive premiership, it would probably have been, "Play the kids".

That's certainly how it appeared to anyone listening to senior coach Mark Thompson and his assistants any time in the lead-up to round one.

"We need to play those guys this year, they need to play," Thompson said after the Cats thrashed Melbourne in round one of the NAB Cup.

Said assistant Brenton Sanderson after a practice match win over the Brisbane Lions: "The important thing is we've got some players in great form who weren't part of our premiership success last year. It's a great position for us to be in to see some of those players who wouldn't normally be walk-up starters push their names forward."

In case anyone had missed it, Thompson reiterated the youth line once more after the Cats' opening-round win over Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium. "We need to keep playing young people," he said.

"It's an opportunity. I thought Gamble played pretty solid tonight, Hawkins was OK too. 'Westy' was playing his first game. So we had three pretty young people in the side, we played interstate and beat a good side."

But the need to regenerate even the best-performed team for years had resonated through Skilled Stadium as early as the week after the grand final triumph, the Cats immediately trading King, Charlie Gardiner, Henry Playfair and Tim Callan.

All were capable senior players who were obvious candidates to step into a breach left by injury or lapses of form. But their presence would also have held back the regeneration process, and perhaps ultimately have cost the Cats young talent they simply never had the room to give a reasonable chance.

When King was dropped back to the VFL last year, West couldn't even learn his trade properly in the reserves. Now he's holding down an AFL ruck slot, competing against the likes of Brendon Lade, Jeff White, and last week, King himself. Gamble has taken the role that might have been filled by Gardiner, likewise Taylor in the case of now Swan Playfair.

The real beauty of the Cats' kids, however, is that while they have kept the senior core honest and the selection pressure intense, they've been learning the trade long enough now for it hardly to prove a case of being thrown to the wolves when they've finally been picked.

Gamble had played only one senior game before the Port Adelaide match, but it had come in 2006. West has had two full seasons at VFL level. Hawkins had a solid and at times brilliant debut AFL season last year, and is such an obvious future star that there is now a significant school of thought that Nathan Ablett did the club a favour when he pulled the pin over summer.

Prismall, meanwhile, has been the best AFL-listed player not getting a senior game for some time. A highly skilled midfielder who is a good decision-maker and a beautiful kick, Prismall had looked a likely senior prospect more than two years ago when the Cats won the 2006 pre-season competition.

And Taylor, while only picked up in last year's national draft, is older than most of his top-order draft peers, and had already played senior WAFL football with East Fremantle.

Geelong's VFL coach Leigh Tudor hasn't had to work overtime convincing his charges they have the capacity to play at AFL level. West, like the others, told The Age recently that he believed he was an AFL player even while sitting on the VFL team's bench.

"That's important, and it's an important thing for all the guys who are outside the AFL team," Tudor said. "Trent's a very quick learner and he's paid a lot of attention to how the other guys have done things. He's someone who picks up on things … the guys who throw their names up are the ones who can play AFL-type football in the VFL.

"The AFL is a lot quicker than the VFL now, so that means you need to be putting pressure on yourself, creating that pressure and making sure you're still playing the brand of football that you need to play AFL football.

"When you're a new, young player, it can take some time to pick up on what that is. But Trent just wants to work hard and keep educating himself, and that's what's gotten him his chance."

West — like Hawkins, Gamble, Taylor and now hopefully Prismall — has made the most of it, the Cats looking as formidable as ever. And a month into the new campaign, the youth push is still getting a heavy workout in virtually every media appearance Thompson makes.

"We would probably have five or six guys we could bring into the team and we would like to bring into the team that are currently playing in the VFL," he said yesterday before the Cats' final training session of the week, laughing off the suggestion Geelong was a team that now ran on auto-pilot. "If you're talking about developing players to play footy, well, we've already got 23 guys who are experienced enough and we don't put a lot of time into them, but we've got another 20 out the back that are going to have to play one day; we've got to point out whether they're good enough."

Thompson certainly isn't wasting much time finding out. And the answers to date are resoundingly in the affirmative. The Geelong side that delivered one of AFL football's most long-awaited premiership wins last year will always be fondly remembered. But it's history as a team. The Cats are about regeneration as well as success.

As scary as it may seem for their rivals, the 2008 model might prove to be even better still.