Scott on the early takeaways from Sunday

It was a good game, I think we should take it for what it was.

There was a lot of lead changes, I thought they were really hot early so we should be in some ways proud of our performance to dominate the game after the first 20 minutes.

When you get 31 shots, it was more than that because we had a couple out on the full, if three of them were rushed then you nearly do enough to win the game.

That bit is disappointing but gee I thought the quality of the opposition, especially early they were hot. 

Scott on the Cats defensive unit

This is going to sound dangerously like an excuse and it shouldn't, that is not my intention. A lot of teams are finding already in a relentless season, if you lose a few key players there is a big flow on effect.

We went into the season thinking Blicavs, Jack Henry, Kolodjashnij and Stewart will be the cornerstone of our defence and none of them are available, with Blicavs having to play in the ruck cause Stanley goes out. The levers are somewhat limited.

We are really pleased to Connor O'Sullivan into the team, it has been good for us short term but it is certainly going to be good for us over the longer term.

Given the way they started especially, we didn't think the mode was lets close this game down, it was more go after it a little bit which gave them some looks on the way back. 

Scott on the clearance battle

We made some errors early with the way we structured up, took a few educated risks and I thought it destabilised us a little bit.

When we got some stability in there with Bailey Smith and Max Holmes in the centre bounce with Blicavs, to my eye I thought a lot of the time they just beat their opponents.

That would be my main observation.  

Scott on Jed Bews return

I thought there was a real credit to our people, our performance team in particular.

Jed had a nasty finger injury, a tendon injury which takes a long period of time. He was into his training pretty quickly, albeit without any ball-handling and he was in really good physical shape.

It wasn't just Stewart, Kolodjashnij and Henry out but it was Lawson Humphries as well.

We backed in that Jed had done enough work to perform well and that decision was certainly vindicated, it is a credit to him as well obviously.