GEELONG coach Chris Scott has expressed his delight at the way the trade and free agency periods panned out for the club.
The Cats been among the most active players during the off-season, acquiring Patrick Dangerfield from Adelaide, Scott Selwood from West Coast, Lachie Henderson from Carlton and Zac Smith from Gold Coast.
“We’re really happy,” Scott said at Simonds Stadium on Tuesday morning. “The plan was a long time in the making.
“The execution of the plan happens over about a week, and Stephen Wells and his team did a great job there.
“But, really, it’s the culmination of years of planning.
“Most clubs these days are thinking a couple of years ahead, at least, and in the early stages it seemed like a pretty ambitious plan to get all four guys over the line.
“But now it’s done, we’re optimistic we’ve given ourselves a chance to be really competitive.
“We also acknowledge that it’s only a chance. [The recruiting] doesn’t really solve anything in the short-term.”
Scott has warned that bringing in new talent is only part of the recipe needed for getting the Cats back into premiership calculations.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do on the way we play,” he said.
“We’ve got some young players coming through that we’re confident in, but they’re by now means bona fide A-grade AFL players yet.
“And with new players coming in there are some challenges around cohesion and game-style, and we need to get working really quickly.
“So we’re optimistic that we’ve given ourselves a platform we can work from.
“But we’re going to have to work really hard, really diligently, to turn that platform into something bigger.”
Geelong paid a high price for its recruits, trading away its first-, second- and third-round picks in this year’s draft.
The Cats also gave up their first-round selection in next year’s draft.
But Scott is comfortable with the situation.
“A lot of thought has gone into this from some people who have been shown to be pretty astute in the footy industry,” he said.
“In a perfect world you keep all your early picks, absolutely, but this is something that we think will benefit the club in the short-term.
“As we’ve said a few times this week, the four guys we’re bringing in are 25.
“They’re adding to a big group of players that are now ready to compete against the best – they’re in that 24 to 26 age-bracket.
“So if they work hard, and we can integrate those guys into our system, we’ve got a big group of players that are going to play together for a long period of time.
“Potentially, we’ll look back and say we would’ve liked to have had a couple of extra picks in 2015 and ’16, but unfortunately you can’t have it all.
“When we look back on it now, we’re very comfortable with the decisions we’ve made.”
Unless Geelong trades its way back into the early rounds of this year’s draft, it won’t enter proceedings until the fourth round.
Yet the Cats will still need to select a number of players to fill the places vacated by the likes of Mathew Stokes (retired), James Kelly (retired), Steve Johnson (Greater Western Sydney), Dean Gore (Adelaide), Dawson Simpson (Greater Western Sydney), Jarrad Jansen (Brisbane Lions), Josh Walker (Brisbane Lions), Hamish McIntosh (retired), Jared Rivers (retired) and Sam Blease (retired).
“We’ll certainly have a lot of picks in the draft,” Scott said. “I would’ve thought there’d be a minimum of five picks in the draft.
“We do have some options with our rookies [in terms of elevating them to the senior list] as well.”
The Cats will start their pre-season in November, and Scott expects all the players and coaches to be desperate to atone for missing the finals in 2015.
“Aside from the work the club’s done in the last week to executive this [recruiting] plan, a lot of our people are really disappointed with the year we had,” Scott said.
“We genuinely thought that our best footy would have been good enough to compete really strongly in the finals, and we didn’t knock that over.
“We’ve had a bit of a break now, we acknowledge how far behind the best teams we are, but we’re ready to do something about it.”
