Press Conference

See what Geelong coach Chris Scott had to say follow the Cats Preliminary Final against Hawthorn

Scott on whether this is the best placed that Geelong has been

Yeah I think that is right. Again, I find it a little bit hard to compare previous eras.

We do sort of shift things regularly in season, we are big believers that the game changes and we want to change with it, or in front of it. But we have been pretty stable for a long time.

In part that is because we have brought some young players in, Connor O’Sullivan is one that comes to mind. Lawson Humphries has been huge for us, even though he played a Prelim Final last year.

Those guys have just become mainstays, there are others as well but they became mainstays really early on in our season.

There is no point keep on going with the same thing if it is not working, but we feel like it has been working for a decent period of time now.

That gives us confidence that we are going to be in pretty good shape to give it a real shake next week. 

Scott on Patrick Dangerfield

I don’t want to pretend that we just wrap him in cotton wool to this time of year, but he was born to play at this time of year.

I hope it continues for a long, long time.

He wasn’t the only one, but when we were under pressure, I just thought that he was so influential.

Early on the game was clearly going their way, everything they would have wanted to happen was happening. Then when we looked like we had lost two players, it was going to be a real juggle from there.

I thought our team in the box adjusted to those things well, but it can be a bit overrated that stuff.

You can do a good job, it is the players that still have to execute. 

Scott on Jhye Clark

A little shoutout to Jhye Clark.

He has been on the edge of our team for a long time and to come in and play the way he did in a Preliminary Final.

I don’t believe in that idea that one performance is the making of players, but hopefully we will look back and say that was a bit of an inflection point for Jhye. 

Scott on Tom Stewart’s injury

It is a shattering situation for him.

If I move forward into the game, we were under real pressure at that stage.

It looked like Jack Henry might have been in doubt for the rest of the game as well, fortunately the feedback we got was that it was a little bit of a nerve situation that looked bad temporarily, but came good.

The Stewart one is a bit hard to take right now. 

Scott on the versatility of Geelong’s team

Yeah I think that is true, and there is a little bit of a nod to our list management team who have done a terrific job there.

But again, if our strategy is that we want to be flexible and move our team around, but you are moving good players away from their best position, that is generally a bad idea.

We just think that when we move our players, they are going from a good spot to another good spot. But again, I would assume that in 12 months time we will be slightly different and we will approach it in a way that suits who we have got.

In 2022 we were an old team, and we are still talking about Dangerfield, Stewart if he had of played, Blicavs is a marvel.

But it is not as if they need to dominate for us to win anymore, which the list management team should take a lot of plaudits for that.Â