Cats coach Chris Scott spoke to the media after tonight’s loss to Richmond.
Really mindful you’re probably missing eight of your best 22 players but did you feel there were some skill issues and uncharacteristic Cats things that popped up tonight that were a bit unexpected?
I’m a bit more positive than that. I mean, the numbers would suggest that we had, you know, more than our fair share of opportunities to really put them under pressure and I think the first quarter, if you ice late it to that, they took their chances, and we didn’t, felt like we were on top, but to your point with the players missing – like, we sort of went into the game really keen to win. If we came away having won, given Richmond played really well, they sort of looked like old Richmond a bit to me, and say it a lot, timing is important in this game. To my eye, they looked like they were playing a lot more the way they did when they were higher up on the ladder. So given we went in with the expectation that they would play close to their best, we went in thinking, OK, we’re going to need to play really well. I think we did for big parts of it. Certainly, the young players we had in our team give us great reason for optimism. So I’m pretty philosophical about it. It’s hard, because in the immediate aftermath, you just want to win the game and everything…and anything but that feels like a disappointment.
But even in the immediate aftermath, I kind of look at it and think, yeah, maybe we let ourselves down with some execution. I thought even this is not saying Richmond had good luck but I just thought we had some bad luck sometimes. Like, just the rub of the green didn’t go our way, the bounce of the ball that sort of thing but again, if you get a little bit more sophisticated than that, kind of look at the players in our team, Ratugolea’s played every game, but he’s still a new player to our team really this year. Certainly in that position. And he was fantastic. I thought Bruhn was good. I thought Jhye Clark when he came on, everyone would’ve seen little patches of what he’s going to be. There’s a lot we’ll take away from the game and be positive about.
Brandan Parfitt.Credit: Getty Images
At half-time, were you thinking if this game continues the way it is, we’ll be right and take our chances?
I probably shared that view. I didn’t think at half time “We’ll be right”. I thought if we kept plugging away and our more inexperienced guys hang in there and keep playing the way that they were, that we’d be a real chance in the game. I did think it was, in large part, just execution. Even the end of the game, scoring shots were the same. They took theirs, we didn’t take ours. Um…probably, when you sort of…and we could see some really tangible examples of this, but while the critical mass of young players, I think we had sort of five under 20 game, you look at them in isolation they all did some good things and there’s reason to be positive but there was some stuff and maybe this is the part where I would agree with you in terms of the stuff that didn’t quite look like Geelong at their best, there wasn’t so much the stuff around the ball, it was just some sort of system things where kind of like, that’s not us. But then you see the players involved and you think: he’s played three games. Just sort of chill out a little bit. I think that’s the reason I’m not…um…as surly as I normally am when we lose.
Do you think you will get anyone back for next week?
I think so. It’s an early call from someone that’s not charged with making those decisions, but I think it’s really positive with Tyson Stengle, Brad Close will obviously play and then we’re getting really…there is a group of players we’re really confident we’ll get back pre-bye. So I think Stanley will be post-bye, Menegola will be post-bye but all the others we’re thinking we’d get back before that. Jack Henry is a chance to play next week. Just got to think about how we approach that.
