Finals are just fine, says Scott

GEELONG coach Chris Scott has dismissed his side’s poor finals record as irrelevant.

The Cats have won just two finals out of their past nine since the 2011 premiership, but Scott said it was unfair on this year’s team to make comparisons with previous unsuccessful finals campaigns.

When asked why Geelong’s home-and-away record hasn’t matched its finals record, Scott replied: “Neither does the team we’re putting out on the park. If you go back to the team that played last year, the team was completely different,” he said.

“If you want to go back three years ago, I just think it’s an illogical argument to say this team has a bad finals record when it’s a completely different team.

“We’d have preferred to have won the grand final last year. We had a bad quarter in particular in the preliminary final, but we did beat the team that had won the previous three grand finals in the first final.”

But Scott sidestepped questions whether his side struggles at the MCG.

“I think if the conversation is as narrow as, ‘Do you think you play better at Geelong than the MCG?’ then I think it’s a hard one argue with,” he said. “I think that’s probably right.

“We’re certainly not dependent on (Simonds) Stadium, because we finished second after 22 home-and-away games and won six at Geelong, so we must be OK winning at other venues.

“We’re pretty excited to be playing at the MCG this week. What’s the alternative, the SCG? We’ll take the MCG.”

But Scott added that his side needed to get better at defending the wider ground.

“When you play on a ground with different dimensions, it affects the way you set up,” he said. “That’s a fact for every team, the same way Sydney will have to set up differently at the MCG compared to the way they play at the SCG.”