Cats can beat the pressure of finals
Chris Scott says the Cats are well prepared for finals despite a disappointing start last Friday night
Chris Scott agreed that Geelong’s possession handling was jittery and unclean when it came to last week’s disappointing loss to the Hawks in the Qualifying Final.
Scott acknowledges that the Cats lack of defensive pressure enabled the Hawks to gain flight in the second half, however, he’s not allowing one loss to tarnish the Cats finals campaign.
Ahead of this week’s Semi Final against North Melbourne, Scott believes the Cats top-four-finish, on top of another full week of training, holds Geelong in a good position for Friday night.
“Unfortunately our skill level and execution through the night wasn’t what we’d expect,” Scott told Cats TV on Tweet the Coach.
“So in terms of addressing that this week, the most important thing for us is the way we train and making sure the attention to detail is right there.
“But we do have an underlying confidence that our players have done enough work through the year to execute under the pressure of a big game this Friday night.
“So we’ll do the work, we’ll talk about it but most importantly we’ll have confidence that we can execute under that pressure.”
Although the Cats were 22 tackles behind the Hawks last Friday night, Scott insists that this result doesn’t indicate a lack of effort.
“It’s an ill-informed leap in my view to suggest low tackle numbers mean that your players weren’t trying, Scott said.
“Our tackling technique was poor on the weekend, we didn’t defend very well as a team and our tackling and pressuring around the ball-carrier was no where near the level that we would expect, and if we had a priority this week that would have been the main one.”
Catch more from this week's Tweet the Coach on Cats TV. Click on the video above to view.