’They didn’t look overawed by the occasion’

he said of Constable, Jordan Clark, Luke Dahlhaus, Gary Rohan, Gryan Miers and Tom Atkins.

“We thought they all executed their role — as we thought they would — it wasn’t a surprise to us that they delivered in terms of their role, that’s why we picked them.

“One of the really pleasing things is they didn’t look overawed by the occasion and not many young players get the opportunity on a Friday night, in a big game against Collingwood, at three-quarter time, to contribute to a win.

“Hopefully that will give them some confidence. There’s a long way to go and there’s a lot of growth in them but we are excited.”

The Cats held firm in a nailbiter, with Rohan’s chase and tackle in the dying minutes, Dahlhaus’s third-quarter goal and the tackling pressure from Atkins and Miers lifting their side to victory.

But Scott stopped short of declaring the club’s off-season changes had paid dividends.

“It will take a lot longer than that to feel like we’ve been endorsed by the footy world, but I said pre-game, we shouldn't have been too hard to work out through this preseason,” he said. “Through the JLT series was how we lined up tonight. (We had) some new faces, obviously, so we prioritised cohesion over anything we might try to keep up our sleeve.

“There’s obviously a few things Round 1 that you roll out that you don’t want the opposition to see, but it was in some way validation for the things that we worked on.

“We should also acknowledge that they’re a really good team and we suspect that