Scott on the feeling after Friday night

We are pretty calm I think. 

It was obviously a really difficult night, but the most important thing for us is to take what we need to out of it and move forward.

We won't be overreacting to one performance, we knew we had some problems going in and we were really are of what the opposition could do.

In some ways, we probably needed them to be a little bit off and they were the opposite.

There is obviously work to do, but we have to be careful that we don't make it bigger than it is. 

01:00

Scott on what went wrong

Well it looked like that, but sometimes it can be a little bit deceiving as well.

I think they were clearly on, even their execution going forward was elite early on. Across the whole game, they were accurate in front of goal and their skill level was really high.

Often when you get beaten by that margin, it can look like you are getting slaughtered for effort and losing contests where you are not quite strong enough.

That did happen a bit, but so often we looked like we were going okay, a skill error and they burnt us on the way back.

I thought it was a little bit more that, that we would be critical of as opposed to the real thirst for the contest.

Certainly their execution in tight was really strong and their very good players, which is pretty close to the whole team, that were really good and especially in tight when the heat was on. 

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 6: Chris Scott, Senior Coach of the Cats is seen during the three-quarter time break during the 2026 AFL Opening Round match between the Gold Coast Suns and the Geelong Cats at People First Stadium on March 6, 2026 in the Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by Russell Freeman/AFL Photos)

Scott on Geelong's ball use

We thought individually a lot of our defenders were good, but collectively it is very, very difficult to defend some of the turnovers that we made coming out of our back half.

Again when that happens, the opposition will always play a part in it.

They were really good with their system, but we did give them a few on a platter which made it difficult for our defenders.

In that spirit, I thought it would be easy for those guys to drop their bundle a bit and throw their hands up, as if to say how are we supposed to defend that?

But I thought they did hang in when it looked like it could have got really ugly.