Pre-season brilliance puts Fort at top of Cats’ ruck list

A STELLAR pre-season from Darcy Fort landed him the number one ruck job at the Cats to start the season.

Fort’s body of work over summer was enough to convince selectors to go with the second-year AFL ruckman over Rhys Stanley against the Giants.

The 26-year-old was slightly outpointed in a mostly even duel with GWS big man Sam

Jacobs and finished with eight disposals.

The more experienced Jacobs won 28 hit-outs to Fort’s 23 and the Giants won the clearance count 33-30.

“Rhys and Forty have really gone at it pre-season, and over the course of the pre-season Forty just edged him out in regards to form,” Geelong assistant coach Matthew Knights said.

“Even a bit of form in the Marsh Series, we just felt comfortable as a match committee that Forty deserved his position.

“Rhys has had a really good pre-season also and both players obviously are going to be really important … for us this year because we’ve only really got two ruckmen in our stocks so it was a really tight decision.”

General soreness was behind Geelong’s reason to leave Jack Steven at home on Saturday night. The recruit looked in fine touch against Essendon in the Marsh Community Series, where he collected 26 touches.

But Knights said the former Saint pulled up sore all over and was unable to train for most of the lead-up to Round 1.

A decision was then made to hold Steven back for Round 2, before it was postponed by the AFL due to coronavirus.

Knights denied the decision had anything to do with Steven’s worrisome calf, which he injured during the pre-season.

“Jack Steven was really close. He played so well for us in Colac and we were quite bubbly about that but he had a little bit of an interruption,” Knights said on K rock Football on Saturday.

“He just pulled up with more soreness than anything out of the Colac game and probably wasn’t able to do the training we would have liked in the lead-up to this game (against GWS).”