Geelong coach Chris Scott says the Cats are mindful of restricting the opposition’s most influential players but there are ways of doing so without a hard tag.

The Cats’ midfield tactics were brought into question this week on the back of a loss in which Blues’ midfielder Bryce Gibbs enjoyed 34 disposals, seven tackles and two goals in what was arguably a three Brownlow vote performance.

Scott believes stopping the opposition’s best player is a fine art which involves far more than simply sacrificing one of your own in a negating role.

“That’s something we always consider and something we think we have in our arsenal,” Scott admitted on this week’s episode of #TweetTheCoach.

“We’ve used Cam Guthrie in that role a lot. We’ve used Mark Blicavs in that role a lot. We’ve used defensive forwards coming up a bit.”

“We tend not to play it the way say a Ryan Crowley of years gone by at Fremantle played it. But I can’t think of too many teams – maybe with the exception of North – that do it that way.”

“We are looking for balance and we always prioritise defence. We think we’ve come up with a good plan this week.”

You can watch the full episode of #TweetTheCoach in the video player above.