Geelong coach Chris Scott has rubbished the notion that a six-day break between games is a disadvantage ahead of the Cats’ blockbuster clash against Collingwood on Saturday.
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“Some of the players may argue with me, I’m not sure, but I think the six-day break thing’s a furphy,” he said. “You don’t want them week after week, and yeah, they were difficult conditions, and yeah, we’ve got to travel – boohoo. Two hours back to Melbourne.
“It might be a one percenter, if that. We will be well and truly prepared, and if we get beaten by Collingwood next week, I guarantee I won’t sit here and bemoan the fixture.
“Seriously, the fixture comes out in late October. We have been preparing for this week, and next week, since then pretty much. We went in with our eyes open and we’d made some plans to mitigate the difficult of that a little bit.
‘‘I’m really hopeful I’d have said exactly the same thing if we had have lost, but I challenge anyone to do a better job of organising the fixture … It’s an incredibly complex thing. I don’t normally stand up for the AFL too much, so they should enjoy that one, I hope.”
The Cats were far too strong for the Lions on Sunday, winning by 25 points in tough, wet conditions.
“We were prepared for difficult conditions irrespective of the slipperiness of the ball,” he said. “At this time of year it’s always going to be humid in Brisbane, at the very least, so we expected it to be a little bit slippery.
“I thought we adapted to the conditions well. It wasn’t the prettiest game of football of all time, but in some ways it’s the side that adapts quickest that prevails, and I thought that was a big part of it tonight.”
Scott praised the contributions of Steve Johnson, who was a powerhouse on the ball, and Andrew Mackie, who stood out with his use of it in his 200th game.
“He had a lot of the ball,” he said of Johnson. “It was one of those where really clean ball use was difficult. We think he’s an underrated contested player – he’s a big man, he’s very strong and he’s a very hard runner, too.
“Sometimes in these conditions when it’s a bit closer, while it takes away from his flamboyance a little bit, in some ways it’s not a bad thing for us because it means he’s got to focus on the basics a little bit more.
''After half-time the conditions were still difficult. It wasn’t raining, but it was still slippery, and any kind of complex use of the ball kind of went out the window. If I had to think of one thing [that won us the game], it was the way we adapted to the conditions.”
