With such a strong history of success at the club, that pressure to perform did not faze O’Neill although as the finals drew closer, it did cross his mind.

“I didn’t really think about the end product, just concentrated on putting together the best pre-season we could and then letting the rest of the stuff take care of itself,” he said.

“As the season wound on, it played on my mind a little bit but thankfully by that stage we’d done the hard work.”

O’Neill puts a lot of that recent success down to a well maintained player list that saw just three changes from last year while Nick Owusu, Nathan Herbert and Jamie Medved all celebrated their 300 games with the team in 2015.

“It’s no secret that if you can be consistent in player turnover then you are going to put yourself in a position to win. There’s no reason to change unless change is forced upon you.

“We set goals like every team does at the start of the year and our first goal was to make the playoffs… and the second goal was to put ourselves in a position to win a Conference Championship. So by any measure, I’d say it’s been a success.”

Geelong will visit Albury-Wodonga in the Conference Final on Saturday night with the winner advancing to the Grand Final the following week.

Watch the full interview with BA TV below: