Elite full-back Mark Blicavs spoke in a press conference about his preseason as a permanent defender.

The 2018 best and fairest winner played as a midfielder/ruckman in past seasons before taking the game on in defence during his standout year.

“It’s been awesome, I’ve had a lot of fun down back, it’s been really good to have a lengthy preseason in one position,” said Blicavs.

“I’ve worked really closely with a lot of the defenders, Harry Taylor especially, just working on my marking.”

Blicavs spent most of the preseason defending star forward Tom Hawkins, but says he’s looking forward to taking on the rest of the league.

“We’ve had some good training against each other but I’m sort of sick of that now, I’m ready to play against fresh competition.”

He is likely to spend time defending Collingwood giant Mason Cox on Friday night, rotating on and off the American recruit with fellow defenders.

“It might be me or Harry starting on him, but there’ll be a lot of us rotating not only through him, through the whole forward line.”

Round one match statistics are in Geelong’s favour, with the Cats winning 11 of their last 14 season openers according to AFL media.

If Geelong takes the W, it’ll mark the club’s 100th win against Collingwood.