Geelong’s VFL skipper, Troy Selwood, will be reunited with his crew this Saturday for the second most important game of the year, the Preliminary Final.
Geelong will come head-to-head against Williamstown to fight for that sacred spot which will place them one step closer to another premiership.
Having been restricted to the sidelines to recover from injury, Selwood is now feeling strong and raring to go.
“I feel good Tommy, it feels like I’ve been out of footy for a long time,” Selwood said.
“The boys have done a great job while I’ve been out injured and I’m looking forward to jumping in and playing my part this Saturday.
“Ever since the dislocation came back in to place it has behaved really well and it’s just a matter of slowly getting the flexibility and the strength back in to it. The last week or so I’ve been doing proper tackling training and bumping, so there are no concerns for this week, which is exciting.”
At 2:10pm this Saturday the Cats and the Seagulls will kick off the ‘sudden death’ battle at North Port Oval. Selwood predicts a tight contest, despite their last two encounters where the Cats dismantled the Seagulls.
“They’re (Williamstown) in some fantastic form, they beat Port Melbourne by almost 100 points last week, so we really need to respect them.”
“We’re doing a lot of work looking at the way they went about it last week and at some of their key players, so it’s going to be a great contest.”
One area of play that Selwood admires the most from the Seagulls’ game is their speed and intensity through the centre.
“They’ve got a lot of run through the midfield and they’ve got some really nippy forwards and if you don’t lock down on those guys they can create havoc,” Selwood explained.
“They’ve only got seven or eight Bulldog players playing for them so their VFL list is really deep. They’ve also got some mature VFL players and a lot of them have played AFL footy before, so they know how to play in big games and that’s probably where it’s counting for them at the moment.”
However, having watched his team’s progression through the season, Selwood is confident his players have the correct level of pressure and skill that’s needed to match them.
“They’ve just shown fantastic attitude and intensity every single time they’ve played and we try and preach that.”
“We know it’s on the line now, it’s do or die, there’s no second chance, we cant be slow out of the blocks and be chasing tails like Port Melbourne did last week.”
Saturday the Cats will make sure a number of pressure tactics are ticked off the list, to ensure they restrict Williamstown from winning the ball and running forward.
“Port Melbourne last week, unfortunately for them, didn’t put in enough physicality through the midfield and the Willy boys were able to run them off their feet,” Selwood said.
“So we need to stop that run by winning the ball and contest early and making sure that when they’ve got the footy they’ve got nothing to go to. When they look up the field we want them to see just our players and it’s just about outworking them again end-to-end and using the width of the ground and stretching them as much as possible.
“We feel as though our attack is as good as anyone, when we get the ball in our hands we have enough class to do our thing with it so we will just be worrying more about our defence for the entire game.”
Catch the full interview on the video above.
