Scott on the win over North Melbourne:

We were really pleased. We knew what to expect from them. They’ve been really consistent and dangerous, especially over the last month. Obviously, they know the ground better than we do.

Although it wasn’t a windy day… the ground is different, and then when they’re kicking with a little bit of a breeze, they kicked the first three. When a really young, talented team gets some momentum, you’re on the back foot. So from that perspective alone, we thought it was a really strong performance to arrest that momentum early on and then play well for the final three-and-a-half quarters.

Scott on responding after last week’s loss:

As much as possible, we try not to overreact to good or bad performances. That was one a little bit out of the box – we’d been good for three weeks before that. We still think in a way that we are building our season. I know there’s only four games to go, but we feel there is still improvement, and today we continued that improvement.

I think the key was we had a few specific things we needed to arrest, and we did that. A part of that was playing the conditions … if anything, we overplayed the heavy conditions last week. And even watching North early, it was pretty clear that you were able to use the ball, they looked dangerous going forward. Not saying we took a leaf out of their book, but I think it gave our players some confidence to execute some of the things we’d talked about.

Scott on Tyson Stengle and Geelong’s small forwards:

(Tyson’s third-quarter goals) were really important. North were coming at us. Tyson is a dangerous player, but even more than that, I like it when he really steps up when the team is under a bit of pressure.

He is a handful, and there were a couple of others down there that we thought were really dangerous deep in our forward line. Shaun Mannagh looked lively again; he’s trending really nicely.

Ollie Dempsey kicked some nice goals, too. I think every team would say it’s great when you’ve got a super player like Tyson, but it’s even better when you can complement a guy like him with a couple of other smalls to at least take some of the opposition’s attention.

Scott on Ollie Dempsey’s form this season:

Ollie has had a great year. He’s maybe developed a little bit quicker than we thought (he would), just because he’s come from a long way back. He didn’t play much footy as a junior, wasn’t as physically developed as some other young players, but he’s just got a real feel for the game, especially for a guy that hasn’t played much junior footy, his instincts are really, really good.

He’s been a real win for us, and continues to be flexible as well. He was dangerous and opportunistic in and around goal, but he’s been playing up the ground a lot too and looking strong.

Scott on building momentum into the final month of the season:

That’s our intention: four games to go, and it feels like it’s just around the corner, but it also feels at the same time that every game you play is hard work. It would be a mistake for us to look too far into the future because, today was a good example: if we were off, we would’ve been beaten. That was clear from early in the game that that was a possibility.

I look at their (North Melbourne’s) team, and I just see young talent everywhere that every team would love to have in their team. And then you look at next week, and they’re the same. It’s just the quality of the competition is really high at the moment in my opinion.

Scott on Gary Rohan health update:

He went straight into the (concussion) protocols, from what I’m told. That was pretty clear; he’ll miss next week.

We had a couple of bumps and bruises – Sam De Koning got a knock to his knee, but was okay to go back on. He just didn’t play the last five or six minutes as a precaution, and my understanding is everything else was clear.