Cockatoo and Selwood at training today.

NAKIA Cockatoo will face an opposition side for the first time since August last year when he takes on Carlton in Saturday Night’s match simulation curtain raiser.

Non-selected players from the Cats and Blues will face off on GMHBA Stadium in Geelong’s first reserves inter-club encounter since the end of lockdown.

Cockatoo last played VFL football for the Cats on August 4 last year, and AFL football in April 2018 after a host of knee and hamstring setbacks.

“He’s a good example of someone who’s been training for a period of time and looking pretty good within our match simulation,” coach Chris Scott says.

“We don’t consider this week to be a huge step up for him, we don’t need to get out the brass band for Nakia just yet.

“It will be a couple of blocks of match sim for him against Carlton. From a load perspective it won’t be a jump at all from what he’s been doing, but we know the tension rises a little bit when you’ve got a genuine opposition there."

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Scott preached patience when it comes to Cockatoo, saying the luckless Cat was still some way from an AFL return.

“I said it’s a very small step for him but it’s a significant milestone I guess in that he hasn’t been able to do that for a very long period of time,” he says.

“We don’t want to put too much pressure on him, there’s still quite a few steps between this week and him getting back to AFL level.

“We’re excited about it, but we don’t want to get prematurely optimistic. That’s proved mentally challenging for me in the past in particular.

“We love him and we want to see him back, but we’re playing the long game with Nakia. I’m still confident he’ll be a good long-term player for us.”

VFL coach Shane O’Bree has already had a good look at the dynamic Cat, with the club’s non-selected players taking part in intra-club match simulation ahead of the Round 2 Hawks clash.

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“Last week we were lucky enough with the numbers we’ve got and a healthy list to play a bit of AFL nines, some match simulation and he got all through that unscathed,” O’Bree says.

“He’s been looking pretty sharp. We’ve been fortunate since the break that he’s been able to get a fair bit of match play in.

“I’m excited for Cocky because he hasn’t played for so long. He has had a good block of training so it will be interesting to see how he goes against real opposition.

“He doesn’t hold back at all and they’ll know Cocky is around."