Cats wait on Stanley call
MELBOURNE veteran Jordan Lewis has declared his team’s lack of finals experience would not stand in the way of September glory, just as it did not hold Hawthorn back in 2008.
The Hawks won what many believed was a premiership before their time in 2008, with only four members of their grand final team having featured in more than two finals before that year and the side having an average age of 24 years and 218 days.
“I suspect the more likely scenario is that he will get through OK, and then we will just have to make an informed decision on whether there is any risk there.
“It is a risk going into any game, it is a bigger risk taking a player who has got a slight injury query into a final and then an even bigger risk again going in against Max Gawn, so if you listen to that, the odds are probably against him.”
Forgotten Geelong big man Zac Smith is an outside chance to return, but the fitness cloud over Stanley makes it increasingly likely the Cats will give Ryan Abbott his first taste of finals.
Scott said Abbott would offer something different in terms of how to approach nullifying Gawn’s impact around the ground.
“If he (Abbott) plays, we expect what we have got the last couple of weeks, which is a really good genuine contest,” he said. “He is different to the other ruck options that we have used this year in that he is mobile, and our other guys are mobile as well, but he has some tricks with his ruck craft.
“He is not a straight up and down ruckman and he will present something different at most stoppages to the opposition ruckman and he has probably had to develop his craft a little bit because he is not as big as some of the monsters like Gawn.
“But we are certainly not putting pressure on Ryan to slaughter Max Gawn in the ruck. We expect that he won’t get his hands to ball as much as Max but he can challenge him in other ways.”
Speaking further on AFL360, Scott urged his side to “embrace” the finals challenge.
“We have got pretty good availability and we had a pretty good idea of what our team would look like post our last game,” Scott said.
“I think we could have been ready to go two or three days after that and we decided to push pretty early in the preparation. The risk is then when you are pretty organised that you try to come up with things that you wouldn’t in a normal week.
“Even if we are good enough to win this week we don’t need two weeks’ preparation for the following game.”