Scott on Friday's team selection

Tom [Stewart] will play, unless something that we are not expecting happens in the next 24 hours.

I think I was clear last week that he was very close, which gave us supreme confidence that he would be okay, and nothing changed in his training early in the week to alter that thinking.

He will be right to go, Shaun Mannagh will come back into our team.

He has been out a little bit longer than I would have liked, personally but as we often do we tend to be a bit cautious in that return to play phase. He will be a good addition for us. 

Scott on Mitch Knevitt

Mitch Knevitt won't play, he has had a little bit of a foot issue.

Knevitt is the only one we know for sure that is going out at the moment. He has had a little plantar fascia issue, it actually wasn't the reason that he was the sub last week.

The way it has been explained to me is that they would like to get on top of that, especially given the fact that he is a young developing player and it is early in the season, rather than having him push through.

It is frustrating for him because he would be in our 22.

Scott on the Cats start to the season

Even if you include the first round, we had a really good win but we had a patch there in the third quarter where we weren't great.

That is probably a reasonable way to explain our start to the year, it has been pretty good just not good enough.

We think we will get better, but it is a really difficult competition and it is going to be a challenge every single week.

Trying to strike that balance between fixing the stuff that needs to be addressed, but also not overreacting and having the self-perpetuating negative cycle.

We are not going terribly, but early in the year it is difficult to get a line on teams form. 

Scott on Melbourne's midfield

Gawn has been such a good player for a long time. Petracca, Oliver, Viney, they are mainstays of what has been one of the premier midfields in the competition.

I don't think that has changed that much, they are all still really high level players. I would give you a better answer if we had two months of exposed form, but we have no choice to assume that their best is really difficult to stop.

We need to be on our game, but we are not a team and haven't been for a long time, that just plays our game no matter who we play.

We are really thoughtful about the opposition and the threats that they present.