FORWARD, midfield, or both?
Geelong superstar Patrick Dangerfield looks set to spend a decent amount of time up forward in Saturday night's cut-throat preliminary final against Brisbane.
Considering Dangerfield's explosiveness out of the centre and dynamism up forward, it can occasionally be a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation for Geelong, but coach Chris Scott has said his star will definitely feature in attack on Saturday night.
Collingwood had no answer for Dangerfield in last week's shellacking, with the Cat booting four goals from 19 touches.
"Hopefully we'll be a little more unpredictable in the way we play, and where some of our key personnel are at times, but you can expect Pat to be forward at times, that's for sure," Scott said on Friday.
"It's a constant, evolving discussion we have amongst our people – the coaching group, the players, Paddy himself.
"We've played him forward in the past. I break my own rule [by referencing] a few years ago, but we played him forward for a whole final against Sydney a couple of years ago (2017), so it's not as if we've been completely reticent to do it.
"The simple answer might not be the one you're after, but we just try to read the game. We have a plan going in but try to stay on our toes and assess what's best, or what the game determines we need the most."
With teams to be named on Friday night, Scott was fairly confident the Cats would go in with an unchanged line-up, saying ruckman Rhys Stanley had needed very little treatment this week on a jarred knee.
A preliminary final always features a few mouth-watering match-ups, but the pairing of All Australian full-forward Tom Hawkins against All Australian full-back Harris Andrews is set to be a highlight of Saturday night.
"It's a great match-up, it's fantastic for the theatre of the game. Every defender in the comp would say they depend on their teammates to an extent, so I don't think Harris would be trying to set it up to be one-on-one with Tom for too long," Scott said.
"We'd like to isolate Tom and get him enough one-on-one chances with Harris, but he's shown himself to be more than competent in that scenario as well.
"I think it would be good for the game if they get plenty of chances to go at it, but I think [Brisbane coach Chris Fagan] has been quite instructive for everyone when he's highlighted the fact they're more than just the 'Harris Andrews Football Club', and I like to think we've got a few more avenues other than 'Hawk', to score as well."
