Cats TV caught up with Chris Scott for this week’s Tweet the Coach, where he discussed Johnson’s bump incident and the loss.
This week’s reaction towards Johnson’s bump resulted in coaches having to re-assess the players' physical tactics and relaying on tackles as their only choice of contact.
When Scott was asked if it had got to the stage where players must simply avoid the bump, he said yes.
Scott does believe it’s got to the point where it’s safer to encourage the players to avoid bumping altogether, however, he admits that when they’re running at full speed the bump can usually be their only safe option.
“We certainly coach our players to tackle in preference to bumping whenever that’s possible, but the big question is whether it’s possible?” Scott said.
“I don’t think there’s enough credence given to the speed in which players are moving in today’s game, often you have two players running full pace directly towards each other and we’re expecting players in less than a split second to make a decision and make the right ones.
“Particularly where players are bracing themselves for contact to protect themselves, they also should be protected by the rules.”
Scott says Sunday’s loss was a defeat that shouldn’t have never happened. Although in saying that, he does believe it helps to highlight specific problems, which will keep the team moving forward.
“The loss crystalises a few things, we’ve been pretty open with the fact that we don’t think we’ve played well over the last month or so and we do need to improve, and unfortunately it bit us in the last quarter against Brisbane in a game that we clearly should have won, given that we were 52 points up.”
“The important thing is that we don’t stick our head in the sand we learn from it, face up to it, take responsibility for the poor performances and poor decisions and then we move on and try and improve.”
Scott also discusses:
The VFL’s triumph on the weekend
The Cats loss to Fremantle in last year’s finals
How do you and the players react to a loss
Click on the video above to watch the full episode of Tweet the Coach with Chris Scott.
