Geelong’s senior coach, Chris Scott, says his playing group now looks pretty healthy compared to what it looked like at the start of the year.
Scott believes the club’s conservative management regime has played a pivotal role in sustaining the players’ fitness in time for the finals’ series.
“Yeah our list is in pretty good shape but to be honest it hasn’t been for the majority of the year, we’ve had a long injury list at times this season but we think we’re managing the players relatively well.” Scott told Radio Sports National.
“We’ve had quite a few injuries that you could put down to bad luck but fortunately we have pretty good availability at this time of the year and most of our players have fulfilled the plan that we had in place, so there’s no reason why we wouldn’t feel very close to our strongest teams this week.
“We’ve got one or two guys with slight queries over them, Nathan Vardy got a whack in the head but his biggest issue is he got a knee in the hip.”
Out of the Cats precarious ruck stocks Scott believes his number one duo would have to be young Mark Blicavs and Nathan Vardy.
“Probably, we were happy with the job they did last week and the week before in Perth,” Scott explained.
However, Scott is confident he has a number of competent candidates for the ruck if required.
“Josh Walker continues to play well, he had a taste at an AFL level and played pretty well, he’s probably more of a forward than a ruckman but he’s shown he can be capable in both positions.”
“Trent West has done the job for us before and he was also very good at VFL level last week, we wouldn’t have any problems bringing either of those two in.”
Across the board Scott says he has a wide group of players that he’d be pleased to place in the Cats best 22.
George Horlin-Smith and Billie Smedts are high on his list, however they’re not the only two players up the very top.
“Not just those two, although they’re up there. I’d say Josh Hunt is incredibly unlucky not to be in our 22 at the moment. Taylor Hunt, Jordan Schroder and Jackson Thurlow are also there. I’ve said this to the players involved, we have a group of eight or nine players that we’d be more than happy to bring into our best 22 at the moment.”
According to Scott the back-line have been a key component to the Cats success and he says there wouldn’t be many defenders that aren’t in the running for this year’s All-Australian selection.
“I think Andrew Mackie has had an outstanding season as a defender, really our back six have been fundamental to our performance this year, when they’ve played well we’ve won and when they’ve been a little bit off, which hasn’t been too often, we’ve struggled.”
“You could put Jimmy Bartel in there as well, he’s played the majority of his footy in the half back flank, and really we couldn’t split Enright, Mackie and Bartel and I think Harry Taylor is a lock, and Steve Johnson and Steve Motlop would be pushing up at the other end of the ground as well.”
Early this year Scott moved Bartel from the midfield into the back-line and since then he hasn’t looked back.
“Jimmy’s pace is certainly not the reason why we’re playing him in the back half. He actually moved back there in Round 4 game against Sydney and we were struggling a little bit and he really turned the game around for us and from that moment on we’ve preferred him in the back half,” Scott explained.
“We have tried to bring in a little bit more speed into our midfield, clearly Motlop and Christensen and Stokes and Varcoe help that, but Jimmy’s year as a half back flanker probably suggests we’d leave him there and we know if things aren’t going well we can always move him and be confident that he’ll have an impact for us.”
