Scott on the takeaways from Friday night

It was tough. We had some challenges pre-game, Blicavs is such an important player for us and him going out late threw our plans a little bit.

We were really pleased with the performance.

The sliding doors moments become more obvious the longer you are in the game, Connor O'Sullivan who would've played anyway, but he has come in and been really good for us and was fantastic tonight.

Rhys Stanley was really good in the ruck, competed against one of the modern greats in that position. In the shuffle, De Koning played a bit more back and he was really solid too.

There are other positives too, but we it wasn't your standard everything went to plan sort of night. 

Scott on Connor O'Sullivan's Performance

My view is that it is very difficult for key defenders to come in and play good AFL footy right from the start.

Even if you think through it logically, they come into the AFL system having never played against men and your first game, its not as if you can hide outside the contest. You have to come in and play on big, strong, veteran key forwards.

Connor is a super athlete, one of the best runners in a team of good runners which says something at 198cm tall.

We think he has the capacity to play as a genuine key defender, but it looks to us like he can read the play well enough. 

Scott on the Cats game plan

If you kick it May all night, you are going to have a really difficult night.

The last couple of weeks, we didn't feel like we have got our game going enough.

It surprised me the number of marks overall, we weren't tracking it and it wasn't as if it was what we were trying to achieve.

The opposition have a bit of a choice, you can try and stop a team marking the ball but it can leave your defence really vulnerable.

That is often the friction within those sort of games, it is a bit of a game of chess. 

Scott on where Geelong are at in 2025

I think it takes a long time, I used to say you have to wait until everyone has played each other but sometimes that takes a long time.

The draw is quirky, more than ever you can run into a team that is really hot or you can get a bit lucky and get a team that's slightly off. Jake Lever is really important to Melbourne for example, but we would have loved to play them last week without Pickett as well.

Those are the things you can read way too much into, especially early in the year and you can get carried away with your own form as well.

I think we are probably disappointed that we lost two games that we thought we were in a position to win, but we feel like we are in a pretty good spot.