THE only team in the AFL that can beat Geelong this year is Geelong.

Its only challenger will be a team fighting itself as much as its opposition.

It is locked in a battle with unrealistic expectation, elevated standards and what can be a monotonous routine of the home-and-away season when external influences already have Geelong locked in for that last weekend in September

The question is: Is it strong enough to handle success?

That in itself is still a learned art. To never be content with the last achievement. To always want more. And to reach a new standard. And keep searching for ways to improve. To enjoy wins with passion and excitement, regardless of expectation.

Winning is a habit; it can become a routine. Just like losing. The key is to never believe it. The expectations of winning can also have a negative influence — believe it or not.

The biggest hurdle facing the Cats in the bid for back-to-back flags will be the ability or otherwise of the players to block out all these potential distractions and not get too far ahead of themselves. To live in the moment. The now.

In 2002, the Brisbane Lions were raging hot favourites all year. So much so that when the final siren went on grand final day and we'd got home by nine points, I was engulfed not by the exaltation and excitement of 12 months earlier but by relief. I was glad it was over.

With success comes pressures and temptations.

The pendulum is beginning to swing. Opposition teams, rather than looking at the task as if it is Mount Everest, are beginning to look at it as a challenge. An opportunity to measure themselves against the best in the land. To see if they can mix it with the best.

There is nothing the Cats can do to prevent this, other than turn up and be prepared the best they can each week. To measure their success against themselves and set the benchmark higher.

Over 22 weeks, that is hard to do. Some players can drop their intensity and that 5 % can be the difference.

Expectation is stacked against them. In a really tough round in which six or seven games could go either way, an overwhelming proportion of tipsters would have gone with the Cats just because they are the best side in the competition.

And they are. They have an extra gear that no other side has. They have the capacity to play at a level superior to everyone else.

We saw it last week against Fremantle in Perth.

Six goals in 10 minutes just before half-time and a withering surge to hit back from 25 points down at three-quarter-time. It was phenomenal stuff.

For most of the game, the Fremantle players were fantastic. Their pressure was outstanding in what was a reminder to other sides that everyone is susceptible to this sort of thing if you can maintain it for long enough.

But a belief that opposition teams cannot go the whole distance against the Cats again rang true.

It's not like Sydney in 2006 after they won the flag in '05. They were still fighting for respect within the football world because nobody believed they could do it again. Yet they very nearly did. Because they still had a point to prove.

Geelong doesn't have anything to prove until grand final day. All it can do between now and then is fail. Unless it wins the flag again, this season will be a monumental failure. That's 148 long days away. The challenge for coach Mark Thompson is to keep his players fresh through that period. To make sure they don't drop off . To make sure they don't wander from the game plan. And don't take winning for granted.

The key will be to find new challenges and new focuses — collective and individual. To be self-critical and analytical, yet not so much that it becomes detrimental. Never to look too far back or too far forward. And to make sure they are judged by their own standards, not those set by others.

The good news for Thompson is that it looks like a team on top of all this.

The players seem remarkably unaffected by the hype. There's no sign of complacency and nobody breaking team rules.

Somehow, the Cats have sneaked under the media radar. The spotlight found other hot subjects — a challenging Hawthorn, a resurgent Western Bulldogs, a hot-and-cold Collingwood, a troubled St Kilda.

Geelong? It is doing what everybody expects it to do. No news in that!

For the Geelong players, the challenge is to keep it that way. To get through the day-to-day grind of 16 more rounds of matches even before the finals.

The players have to enjoy their wins because that's what it's about. There were times not so long ago when the Geelong losses far outweighed the wins. And it'll happen again.