Chris Scott on the Cats’ hot start:
Even without [Sean] Darcy, their strength is around the ball in our view, and we were able to get field position and put them under pressure in our forward half. A few nice play completions from our forwards, but again, against them at this venue, a lot on the line, if you’re giving up field positions from the stoppages, which is clearly their strength, relative to ours, then we knew we’d be under pressure. If I had to put it down to one thing, it was the guys around the ball getting it done early.
Chris Scott on the critical factors in the win:
I thought when the game was really on the line, two or three points either way, we were able to hold on defensively. They were very, very different game styles. It’s one game where you’ve got to look a little bit deeper than the stats sheet, because it will look quite lopsided in some areas. But you have one team determined to play a certain way, and another playing a completely different style. But when they do possess the ball, spread the ground, it can be taxing to defend, and I thought we were able to do that well enough to deny their scoring chances, and then we were able to hurt them the other way.
Late in the game … when there were a few a few fast breaks and the space, we’ve got some pretty dangerous players in our forward half, and with space and even numbers, they can be hard to counter.
Chris Scott on Patrick Dangerfield’s influence:
I thought especially in the last quarter (he had a big impact).
Obviously the game was red hot the start of the last quarter, and as much as anyone, we thought he took the game away from them. One of the things – and it’s only one of the things – that’s made him a great player over the years is that he can get you in different ways. In the last quarter, those big, contested marks. For a guy with that sort of speed, and for such a renowned ground-level player, his ability to go forward and trouble the opposition is a strength that’s nice for us to have.
Chris Scott on Gary Rohan and Tanner Bruhn:
Rohan, we just decided to be a bit cautious with him. We brought him over with the intention of playing him. Nothing happened, but we had a few other priorities that we were thinking about in terms of how we wanted to set up the game, and it was just, in the end, prudent for us to hold him back for another week.
He’ll play next week at Marvel.
Tanner, it was communicated to us at half-time that he had some dizziness symptoms, so he was taken out of the game straight away.
Chris Scott on Geelong’s spread of goalkickers:
We’d like to think we can do it in different ways when we play well. Last week, (Jeremy) Cameron kicked six, and we’re fine with that, but ideally you’d like to be playing a style that, when things aren’t going your way necessarily, you can change things up and challenge the opposition with different looks. Being away, you almost steel yourself for the fact that you’re not going to have one of those days when everything falls into place. Even when we had the first four [goals], you’re still on edge, because you know that’s not the way the whole time, so you need to be prepared with different options.
Chris Scott on the team’s recent form:
We’re confident, but not overconfident, I hope. I stress, we were 7-0 to start the year … didn’t feel like we were the best team in the comp and everything was perfect. And then we lost some games in a tough part of the draw to good teams – most of them by a small margin – didn’t think we were going that badly either. It’s more, I suspect what’s going to happen at the end of the year is one or a couple of teams will get hot and play their best footy, and they’ll be the ones to beat. And it may well be that better teams get beaten because they’re just going through a patch of the season where they’re not peaking.
