Geelong coach Chris Scott speaks on all things Cats before the season
While he acknowledges it is natural for a premiership side to see things differently when defending a title, Chris Scott has shrugged off any fears the Cats will be consumed by success.
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Don’t expect Chris Scott to change.
We may be only months removed from one of the most satisfying premierships in memory – an 81 point swing in the ongoing referendum on the Geelong coach’s tenure.
The outside noise never quietened on Scott: excuses were made for the premiership in his first year in 2011 and water poured on his history-defying win percentage given Geelong’s finals failures.
In the fairytale of that sun-drenched MCG last September, Scott would have been forgiven for lunching into a tour of declaring “I told you so”.
But he is still the same Chris Scott.
A confident, sometimes prickly defender of his club and his team to those on the outside and a caring and whip-smart football genius to those on the inside.
Even after destroying any negative narratives about his coaching career six months before, then watching the Cats dominate the trade period by somehow landing Tanner Bruhn, Jack Bowes, Ollie Henry, a top-10 pick that has become Jhye Clark and holding on to the important Esava Ratugolea, there is no chance he will spill any secrets.
When asked during a lengthy discussion about the year ahead with the Geelong Addy what was written on a fresh whiteboard as the Cats coaches mapped out how to play in 2023, he wouldn’t buy into specifics.
“I don’t want to explain it in great detail to the rest of the world,” he says.
Later on, Scott is queried about how Geelong managed to walk the line of winning a flag and pulling off one of the great trade periods in memory, there are few details.
“Even now I am a little reticent to talk about it because it’s just a bad idea when you think you have something you think is going to work to explain it in great detail,” he says.
Those answers are vintage Scott, protecting what works and not giving the opposition an inch.
Scott has happily kept state secrets inside Kardinia Park over the past 12 years but that doesn’t mean he is evasive.
A deep thinker about the game and leadership in general, Scott does reveal the whiteboard looks different to 12 months before.
“We are big believers that the team will not only look different but it has to look different if you are going to have a successful year,” he said.
This latest iteration of Scott’s Cats is committed to making the most of its strengths, which is clear up forward with the sheer audacity of Jeremy Cameron, the old-school small forward wizardry of Tyson Stengle and the AFL’s tenured professor of forward craft, Tom Hawkins.
Clubs have been gearing up over summer to play quicker and score more and Scott expects that to continue – and for the Cats to get the ball in to those goalkicking aces whenever possible – but he doesn’t rule out a swing.
“I think the general consensus from around the competition (in 2022) was if you were going to beat the really good teams you had to have the capacity to score and put those teams under pressure,” he says.
“That seems to be the general consensus again but being in the consensus camp is often a dangerous thing because you are not ready for something that will surprise you. Being a bit contrarian in your thinking is where the big gains are made.”
There is that classic Scott, opening the door just a sliver into this thinking.
One of the greatest AFL coaches of modern times, Scott is still searching for improvement and still looking for answers as Geelong works to sidestep a premiership hangover.
THE DISEASE OF MORE
In the NBA, legendary coach and front office master Pat Riley describes it as the “disease of more”.
After winning a championship, players on his gamechanging Los Angeles Lakers sides would come back less concerned about the team and instead worried about getting more: more touches, more points, more minutes, more money.
In the AFL, where competition is tougher than perhaps ever before as the likes of Melbourne, Brisbane Lions, Richmond, Sydney, Collingwood, Fremantle, Carlton and the Western Bulldogs all push for a top four berth, even the smallest slip in team-first desire could see Geelong tumble.
The Cats will push on to improve and Scott vows that his coaches will not stand in the way of a young player bursting into the side and pushing out an older, better credentialed senior player.
While he is watchful, the coach doesn’t see any disease creeping in at Geelong just yet.
“I think it is real and it is logical but there is an alternative as well,” Scott says.
“There is an alternative proposition that because you play on a really good team and because you have had success, you are better as an individual and if you believe in that idea, it is better to invest in the team.
“I can completely see that logic of if you have had that success, the mindset might slip form doing everything I can to help the team.
“The other thing is that we have a big group of players that have come from either a non-traditional background of have been late picks or might have to built their way up. The idea that team success would change them and they would all of a sudden fall in love with themselves, even if we are watchful for it, I would think it’s a low probability.”
Scott sees merit in another NBA adage, media mogul Bill Simmons’ theory of having “too many guys”.
Simmons says there are only so many minutes that can be shared around a team and if good players miss out and lose their drive, it can drag down the whole squad.
Just consider the names on Geelong’s list who weren’t called to the dais during medal presentations last September: Henry, Bowes, Bruhn, Max Holmes, Sam Menegola, Esava Ratugolea, Jonathon Ceglar, Ollie Dempsey, Shannon Neale, Sam Simpson, Mitch Knevitt.
The Cats will have a lot of guys missing out every week in 2023 and Scott is on guard.
“I think it’s right in theory and it could happen,” Scott says.
“I think if you get into that mindset that ‘it can’t happen to us’, you are getting into trouble.”
HIT OF SATISFACTION
Before the sun had risen on September 25, Chris Scott was already basking in a glow.
While his favourite moment of the previous day’s grand final win was taking in the lap of honour with his family, perhaps the first real hit of satisfaction come hours later as he sipped his morning coffee.
“I had a really early night actually and I never really sleep that well after a game so I was up before the sun came up and sitting there the next morning and having a coffee, that was one of the better coffees I have had in a while,” he said.
The master coach doesn’t live in a cave – he knows a second premiership as coach and fourth when counting his playing days changes his career.
But he won’t let it change who he is as a person.
“It changes my footy life,” he says.
“This probably sounds a bit fluffy but I really love what it does for Geelong.
“I saw the way it shifted the town in 2011 but I didn’t have a great reference point because I had only really been there a year but it felt like our family saw it (last year). From that perspective it does (change my life).
“The other side of it is that I never thought that my job defined who I was. On another level I would be disappointed if I thought completely different about myself.”
Scott tried desperately to let the victory sink in, even if just days later he was telling players their dreams were done as they were cut from the list.
For a few months he basked in the same glow that has surrounded Cats fans since Cameron Ling handed the premiership cup to Scott and Joel Selwood.
But now the season is almost back and Scott is back determined to contend yet again.
Watch him bat down questions from the media, celebrate wildly in the coach’s box or wrap an arm around one of his players and you will see – he is the same as ever.
Scott opens up on unusual contract approach
Dual premiership coach Chris Scott says the length of his contract won’t decide whether he stays on as Geelong coach and his tenure is an “ongoing discussion”.
The master mentor holds a contract to stick with the Cats into a 14th season in 2024 but has talked openly since Geelong’s premiership last year about his frank discussions with leaders around the club about whether he should continue in the role.
Scott has long said he didn’t see himself as a long-term coach but appears as safe and comfortable in the role as any head coach in the AFL.
He said he would happily walk away if it was in the club’s interest.
“I think it is what is best for the club,” he told News Corp.
“Without getting too philosophical about it, – I am not in a position where I lecture the board or the CEO (Steve Hocking) – but my opinion is it is possible to move away from this idea that the coach’s contract sort of defines whether he stays or goes.”
When asked if he was not a year-to-year proposition as coach, Scott’s said he was committed to having discussions on his future after September.
“I’m much more confident given the people that govern our footy club that this will be an ongoing conversation and it will become clear at the time (when it’s time to leave) so trying to forecast when that might be can be a waste of time,” he said.
It has quickly become folklore that Scott sat the likes of Joel Selwood and Patrick Dangerfield down after the 2021 finals series and asked them if he was still the man for the job, with the Cats greats backing him in before winning the 2022 flag.
Scott said once it was clear it was time to move on, Geelong would “have to be ready to move quickly”.
“I’ve always had the view that as a coach you are better going a bit too early but at the same time, I always know in the back of my mind that it is easier to say and harder to do,” he said.
“I will say, at the end of last year, if nothing else, I had been there a long time and if I got the sense that change is good, I would have been out of there.”
Originally published as Geelong coach Chris Scott speaks on all things Cats before the season
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