Scott on the Cats emerging talent taking the reins

A little bit, but in a perfect world we never completely hand over the keys because we still like to think that our senior players are close enough to their prime.

The ambition is to have Mitch Knevitt in that midfield with Tom Stewart and Patrick Dangerfield as much as possible, and Lawson Humphries with an experience group of defenders.

We think over a relatively short period of time, we have developed a group of players who are locks to play in our 22 every week, but still have 10 years of footy in front of them.

Bailey Smith fits into that too, Lawson is well and truly in our best team, and Mitch Knevitt has had a great preseason so he will get some early exposure. 

Scott on the players mindset amidst adversity

They are professionals. 

You have heard me say it before, we don't treat them like kids so we don't hide from them the reality of the situation. We do have a high expectation that they have a level of professionalism and autonomy, that they can think on their feet and adjust.

We don't account for every minute of their day, we don't tell them how to feel in these sort of situations but we do have a high expectation that they get themselves ready to perform.

It is a wild hypothetical, but if we assume we are not playing and we got a call at 6.00pm tonight saying the cyclone had turned around, you are playing then we will be ready. 

Scott on De Koning playing in the ruck

That is a reasonable assumption.

If I go all the way back, Sam struggled with some knee issues last year and ended up having post season surgery. We thought that would manifest in a slower start to his season this year, but he recovered really quickly and was ahead all the way through his rehab.

It looked like he was moving like the player that he was before that injury, so we were really optimistic.

Throughout his career, including his junior career he hasn't done much ruck work necessarily. We are very optimistic that he can be a high impact player in that position into the future. 

Scott on Shaun Mannagh's progression

He is progressing really well, hopefully you saw him a little bit out there today.

I would describe it as not serious, but an injury that you need to be cautious with, if you can even call it an injury. There has been this really slow, frustrating progression for Shaun because he feels like he has been feeling good for a long time.

There are a few players in that category, where we didn't see the value of rushing them back so they could get one or two extra games. Where as if we waited a bit, we can be absolutely certain that they are ready to go.

Shaun had such a great preseason until we backed him off, that we expect him to hit the ground running.