Chris Scott on... Tom Hawkins

He'll play. That was my hope, and not quite expectation, but that was my suspicion about a month ago and he's just had a ripping month.

We don't expect him to necessarily be as good in Round 1 as he will be as the year evolves but he is well and truly good enough to play and the last month has given us great confidence, so that's exciting. 

Chris Scott on... Mitch Duncan 

Mitch won't play at all.

Mitch won't play for the next few games, so we're thinking, and it's quite conservative, when I start saying it out loud it reminds me of trying to phrase it differently, to the way we talked about Patty Dangerfield last year, but I'm struggling. 

It's a bit similar in that we could bring Mitch in, but it's a good example of treating players individually based on their specific situation. (Tom) Hawkins is very, very different. Yeah, he hasn't had a full pre-season, didn't play the practice games, plays a different position, his injury is structurally sound, they've got no concerns there so he'll play, whereas Mitch can probably play but he's different in that he's more your kind of 15-16K game guy who we're going to be a bit more conservative with. 

Chris Scott on... The New Faces

We'll hold Jack (Bowes) back as well but he's different to Mitch in that he has had a flawless pre-season right up until the point where he had a little bit of a calf issue, so we're confident that he could play this week as well, so much so that he'll definitely play next week

Tanner Bruhn will play, Ollie Henry will play and Esava Ratugolea is not a new face, but he didn't play with us towards the end of last year and he has well and truly earned his spot, so that's exciting for us too.

Chris Scott on… Esava Ratugolea

We played Esava back about midway through last year.  He came off ankle syndesmosis surgery in the first half of the year which really held him up and he ran into a situation where we were a pretty settled team in the last couple of months of the year and it was hard to break in.

He did play one game against West Coast here last year as a key back and performed really well, and gave us the confidence that if a spot opened up in a final that he could do that. Across the pre-season, this is the part that I'm kicking myself a little bit, is when I watched him he looks like a back to me. I ask myself did we make a mistake by persisting with him for too long in other positions?