BREAK A ‘REAL POSITIVE’, SAYS SCOTT:

CHRIS Scott bristled at the question.

He was asked at his weekly press conference what had been done to guard against a slow start against Fremantle on Monday night given the long break between games.

Since the start of 2012, the Cats have lost nine of 13 first quarters by an average off 22 points when coming off a midseason or finals bye.

Their average score in opening terms across that period is 12 points.

And while it’s not an official bye in the fixture, the 11 days since the Collingwood game on July 16 is a similar break to the traditional spell between rounds.

Having said that, Geelong performed well against Hawthorn in Round 2 in the season’s resumption when it was 82 days between games.

The Cats coach rejected any comparison of Geelong’s record off byes with its prospects off an 11-day break.

He preferred to “deal in facts”, which revealed the side had a 1-12 record off mid-season or finals byes over the past nine seasons.

“I’ll leave it to you to manipulate the data to suit the story but the case of this week, I think the 11-day break has been a real positive for us, given we do have a few sore boys (and) we do have a really compressed fixture coming up,” Scott said.

“To answer your question specifically, the focus has been less, to be honest, on this week and more looking at it over a five or six-week period to make sure we manage our squad appropriately.

“We’re in the situation we are virtually every week — if we win, we’ll get the plaudits and say we’ve managed them well, and I’m sure if we lose, again, you’ll be able to manipulate that data and cherrypick the pieces to suit the story.”

When told the average quarter-time difference was 22 points when coming off a midseason or finals bye, Scott said: “You’ll be cheering for it (the story) hard 20 minutes into the first quarter, I’m sure. Good luck with that.”

If Geelong loses to Fremantle or is again slow to start, he can expect the query to come up again.