(TIM LANE is a commentator with Channel 10 and 3AW, as well as Back Page Lead.)

So Geelong's days of domination aren't over. Do I eat the words uttered in my Channel 10 commentary last Saturday night and, if so, how do they taste? The answer is very nice. That's the beauty of the Cats: you can enjoy them even as they make you look stupid.

Champions are like that. Bill Collins declared Kingston Town had no chance on the turn in the Cox Plate one year. Bruce McAvaney said Carl Lewis couldn't win, a split-second before King Carl stormed over the field in the hundred metres at the 1991 World Championships. Muhammad Ali was written off after Ken Norton broke his jaw in 1973. Public ridicule aside, sport delivers maximum enjoyment when champions prove themselves even better than you'd dared hope. But the Cats of 2010 are still to achieve that.

Yes, they trounced the Bulldogs on Saturday night, but we know they frequently tear apart the less-competitive. They destroyed Port Adelaide at Geelong early in the season and they smashed Sydney at the same ground a few weeks later. They haven't, though, torn apart too many true contenders in recent months, and there are now serious doubts as to whether the Dogs are that.

In sports commentary, as in comedy, timing is everything. On Saturday night, a declaration that Geelong's "days of domination are over" became a resounding clanger. I don't necessarily resile from it though. In their days of domination, the Cats won 19 out of 20 on the way to winning the 2007 grand final by 119 points. Then they won 23 out of 24 before tripping up on the big day in 2008. They won 13 straight at the beginning of 2009 before besting St Kilda to win another premiership. These truly were days of domination.

Moreover, from the start of "The Run" in round six of 2007 until last year's flag, the Cats lost just seven of 70 games: 10%. This year, they've lost five of 20: 25%. The numbers are conveniently round and tell a revealing story. It's quite a shift. This year, their record against top-six teams is 2-4. They beat Collingwood before the Magpies' form peaked, and now they've thumped the Bulldogs. The Cats lost a re-match with Collingwood, and also had their colours lowered by St Kilda, Fremantle, and Carlton.

We always look for reasons when a champion is beaten. Against the Saints, the Cats weren't helped by the wet conditions. They had injuries and faced a buoyant opponent in front of its own crowd when they lost to Fremantle. As for Carlton, well, that was just an off-day. Even the Collingwood loss was explained away as one of those nights. Yet everybody else was up for that game; why not the Cats?

Of course Geelong has been the hunted for a long time and sportsmen are human: perhaps at some stage the appetite to perform at the very highest level, week in, week out, diminishes. And this team is growing a little older and taking a little longer to recover from game after game of punishing football. Physically and psychologically, these are perfectly good reasons why Geelong might not be capable of the consistency it was once producing. But they are also reasons why the team is now more vulnerable than it once was; reasons why it might not be inaccurate to say its days of domination are gone. That's not to say the Cats are gone, just that they've entered a new phase.

Geelong will probably have to beat both Collingwood and St Kilda in September to win the flag. These will be two genuinely tough opponents. The Cats will need to beat one of them just to play in the grand final. September will be a tough month. I'd love to see them win a third premiership: so good have they been for such a long time, they deserve it. But it's getting harder.