Newcomers guide Cats to first-up win
CHRIS Scott lauded his band of debutants as Geelong upset Collingwood on the big stage in a Round 1 thriller.
Scott was full of praise for his newcomers, with Charlie Constable one of six new Cats who stood tall under pressure, booting a clutch final-quarter goal in a fighting seven-point win at the MCG.
“We as a collective in our football club were really proud of them,” he said of Constable, Jordan Clark, Luke Dahlhaus, Gary Rohan, Gryan Miers and Tom Atkins.
“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 — 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 ‘Bucks’ (Nathan Buckley) will sit here and talk about not taking those chances in the second quarter when they really could’ve put us to the sword.
“We’re realistic of where we are.
“Whenever you win a close game like this against quality opposition there’s an element of luck in there, but for our players, our footy club and our supporters as well, they could look at our new players and think, ‘It actually makes sense why they’re in our best 22 at the moment’.”