Geelong midfielder Joel Selwood is optimistic the Cats can still improve during this year's AFL finals series.

The Cats booked a safe passage through to a preliminary final by beating the Western Bulldogs last Saturday and will play the winner of Saturday night's Collingwood-Adelaide clash the following weekend.

Selwood, who has enjoyed a stand-out season, said the weekend off and the likely return of forward Steve Johnson after recent hip injury meant the Cats still had room to improve on the penultimate weekend.

"Hopefully a lot, we've still got to improve," he said this week.

"There's going to be a quality side that we come up against in the prelim and we'll have to improve on our last performance against the Bulldogs.

"As a group we're still growing this year, we're slowly getting players back (from injury).

"Stevie will be right to go which is good and Chappy (forward Paul Chapman) got another game into him on the weekend.

"So hopefully there's some improvement."

Fellow star Gary Ablett said Geelong would train hard during their weekend off, but would benefit from avoiding the big bumps of a cut-throat final.

"I'm sure they'll train us pretty hard, but it will be good just to have the weekend off from the crash and bash stuff," Ablett said.

"That will be good for the boys, they'll enjoy the rest."

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