Cats low on upfront options

A string of injuries leaves forward line struggling

at its most dangerous this year it has had a decent spread of goalkickers.

Teams with multiple options to goal are harder to beat than those with just a few.

Geelong looked lost for options in its loss to West Coast last week. That’s partially down to it struggling in other parts of the ground, but also because it was without Tom Hawkins.

Hawkins is the go-to man inside the Cats’ forward line, hit up a massive 30.2 per cent of the time.

Daniel Menzel is the second most-used option, attracting the football 21.1 per cent of the time Geelong goes forward. The duo have kicked just over 30 per cent of Geelong’s goals this year.

But it has been the midfield that has shouldered the rest of the scoring load rather than a typical small forward.

Patrick Dangerfield has bagged 23 goals, Mitch Duncan has seven and Joel Selwood has booted five.

James Parsons, Darcy Lang and Cockatoo — genuine small forward options — have combined for just 17 goals.

Motlop has been Geelong’s best creative outlet with 14.

Scott has talked at length about how important continuity is in the forward line, highlighting Adelaide’s ability to keep a solid group of players out on the park in those positions.

Parfitt, Cockatoo and McCarthy are all likely to filter back to the senior team before finals.

Parfitt trained with the main group this week as he returns from a hamstring, while Cockatoo ran laps after also suffering a hamstring.

The club is also happy with how McCarthy is progressing from his groin troubles.

However, Gregson has been all but ruled out for 2017 with a navicular injury. The positive is that the Scott was confident the crafty forward would recover.

The initial 12-week recovery now looks like eight weeks, “so he has got some good news, which he needed because he had a series of unfortunate events with that foot,” Scott said.

“He’s contracted with us for next year. We’re very optimistic he is going to be a good player for us.”