GEELONG may have fallen in the final game of the regular season to Melbourne, but there were several positives.
Coach Chris Scott highlighted some of those in his post-match press conference. Here are some of the main takeaways, presented by Morris Finance.
A steeled and galvanised group…
The reframing of the situation is really important because it would be easy to dwell on what happened late in the game and forget about how dominant we were early in the game but even irrespective of that, that’s not the most important thing at the moment. For us the most important thing is moving forward and focusing on how we can play our best footy next week which the guys are really steeled and galvanised to do.
A positive outlook…
I thought for a large part of the game we showed how well we can play. The last 30 minutes of the game we just couldn’t get our hands on the ball and it’s hard to work out exactly why that’s happening, but one theory is you’re 40-points up, the last home and away game of the year, you know you’re playing in Adelaide the following week, it is very difficult to stay in the moment and not project forward.
So, I’d like to think when the stakes are higher and that we are in that position that we would be able to stay in the moment better than we did. We certainly made some mistakes and Melbourne played well and really gave them a chance – the last 30 minutes was unlike us, but even then, you look at it with 10 minutes to go and we were able to stabilise the game and should have won with two or three minutes go to but again it was a commodity of errors from a lot of people.
Scott on the confidence Geelong’s Round 13 win against Port brings…
We are really confident we can play well. The last time we played them over there helps that a little bit but more important than that is that we think our game is in pretty good shape notwithstanding the last 40 minutes of this game.
Scott on embracing the challenge…
We are ready if we need to be on the road for a certain period of time. I think we have got a really good history; in fact, I know we’ve got a really good history over the last 18 months of handling these situations really well. It will be uncertain, it will be difficult at times, there will be some curveballs I’m sure, but we are embracing that challenge.
Scott on Tom Hawkins’ 300th game this week…
It is a huge achievement, and we will recognise it. He has been fundamental to what we have done as a footy club for 10 to 15 years and that’s more than he has just done on the field. I think it’s fitting that his 300th game is such an important game for the club, and I think he will be hard to stop next Friday night whenever it is.
As we have evolved as a team the thing that has impressed me as much as anything is that he has been ahead of that evolution, he has driven that change both in the way that the game has been played overall with the shift in the rules and the like, but also what we’ve had to do. He’s one of only two or three guys who were on our list in 2011 from memory and without those guys we wouldn’t have been able to have the consistency we’ve had.
