Scott on the early takeaways

I thought it was a pretty high standard game.

Sometimes the hotter the game, the more obvious that some of the execution issues can be. It can be a little unfair, because I suspect that even watching it on TV, you see some missed shots at goal and think how could he miss that one? But you don't see the build up where players just work so hard.

I think both teams had their chances to put more pressure on the opposition, but outside of those things, I thought it looked like two good teams going at each other.

They have obviously been going well, the win-loss record is obvious there, but I think it has been a bit deeper than that.

They have been challenged a few times in games, tonight was a good example, and they found a way to come out on top. 

Scott on where Geelong is at

I don't think we come away from the game, or that we will come away from the game devastated about where we are at.

I always hesitate because in the immediate aftermath, it is hard not to feel what you feel and we had the chance to win the game. We gave ourselves enough chances to really put them under pressure, and just couldn't get it done in the end.

But if you take a step back, which we will get the chance to do with the bye coming up, I suspect our takeaway will be that we feel like we are in a spot where we can have a crack at it.

That is very easy to say and hard to do in this competition, Fremantle are clearly there, but there is an argument that it doesn't matter how easily you get to that point of contention, the thing that matters is do you get there.

We think that we have got that opportunity in front of us. Besides not getting the four points, we come away at least with our confidence in our game intact. 

Scott on the momentum shifts within the match

We don't talk very often, but I tend not to explain the tactical stuff post-game. But it is a reasonable observation that both sides had their moments, and it became a bit of an execution thing in a lot of those instances.

Again, sometimes you come away from games thinking we have got some serious flaws in our system, because the opposition were able to play a certain way. I don't necessarily think that after this game.

Things may well change as the season progresses, but I suspect both teams will come away thinking we are in good shape and our best footy is going to be hard to beat. 

Scott on covering some key outs

We actually liked Tanner Bruhn, particularly early in the game. We thought he looked sharp.

I have heard it said before that you want to be a team where if one of your stars is out, the next man stands up. I would love that too, it is just wildly optimistic and it doesn't work that way, especially with midfielders.

That is one of the things I admire about list builders, is that the list build of Fremantle, they have got to the point where they can still win games against good teams without Serong in the team, because Young, Brayshaw, Bolton and Reid give them depth.

That probably hurt us a little bit, but to answer your question more specifically, we are liking the development of Oisin Mullin. Even in the immediate aftermath, we sort of think that we probably didn't use him the way that we could have at times when Bailey wasn't there.