AFL 2022: Chris Scott opens up on game style, his coaching ability and more with Mark Robinson

Geelong’s disappointing finals exits have left experts questioning if its game style stands up September. But Chris Scott sees it another way.

For a man who says he tells the truth too much it gets himself in trouble, Chris Scott sure likes to keep secrets.

Even his office at the footy club doesn’t give away anything.

The whiteboard is clear — did he wipe it before this interview? — and there’s nothing on the walls — no inspiring Winston Churchill quote on posters, nor master plans, nor past team photos, not even one of the 2011 premiership team when Scott was just 34 and in his first year of coaching.

He’s now 45 and about to enter his 12th season and, truth be told, he has a home-and-away record better than any long-serving coach the game has ever seen.

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Chris Scott keeps his cards close to his chest. Picture: David Smith

Yet, irate Cats fans still bombard talkback radio with ridiculous claims that he can’t coach.

Or at least can’t coach in September. That’s also ridiculous, too.

His past four campaigns have produced three preliminary finals and a grand final.

Not bad for a team that has had just eight top 20 picks from 12 drafts across the past five years. And only one of them was a top 10 pick — Nakia Cockatoo, who is no longer at the club.

In the same time frame, No. 1 seed Melbourne has had 10 top 20 picks and seven top 10 picks — Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver, Luke Jackson, Angus Brayshaw, Christian Salem, Jimmy Toumpas and Sam Weideman.

It’s been a remarkable list build by the Cats and unprecedented in football.

The magic question is: How have they stayed near the top for 18 years?

In that period, they missed finals just twice and have made preliminary finals 12 times.

In comparison, Carlton and Essendon have played in zero preliminary finals. It really is incredible.

Chris Scott plans to use Joel Selwood for less time in the midfield in 2021.

GAME STYLE CONCERNS

The Cats have contended under Scott because of shrewd recruiting, wise trades, gun stalwarts and a game style that is defence-first and which is designed to protects the team’s weaknesses.

And here we are, in his office, talking about the Cats needing to change their game style.

Asked if he is annoyed when it’s said Geelong’s game style doesn’t stand up in finals, Scott said: “No one does unless you win it. It’s just a fact.”

The point is the Cats are a fraction off being good enough and, this season, they can either keep banging away with the same game style and players and get the same results, or make adjustments.

Not tweaks, but semi-major adjustments to how, where and when they move the ball and who will have it with ball in hand out of the back half.

In a nutshell, Geelong will try to attack more this season.

Of course, it’s always more complicated in the doing than the telling.

Scott’s not about to abandon philosophy and defensive strategy for boldness or risky football, but will he encourage more instinctive footy, less prop and stop out of the back half, more corridor use, more adventure and less fear of turning the ball over?

“Yes, that’s definitely something we are looking at,’’ Scott said

Simplistically, get the ball in quicker to key forwards Tom Hawkins, Jeremy Cameron and Esava Ratugolea before defences collapse on them?

He says football remains a game of balance.

“I’m careful about not talking about other teams, but I think this a reasonable analogy because it’s been spoken about so often,” he said.

Chris Scott says Jeremy Cameron has been impressive this pre-season. Picture: Alison Wynd

“Carton has got a really potent forward line, a Coleman medallist, some weapons up there as well, and I’m assuming the question they are asking themselves is how much do we open up our defence by looking to score a bit more.

“It’s no secret, what every club is saying is ‘we have to find a system that treats that balance carefully’.

“The way I’d describe it and we’ve talked about a little bit, we thought our game style when it worked well it worked really well and the scoring numbers reflected that, and even in big games.

“In 2020, we became more controlled with the ball than I anticipated we would be, but it was working for us.

“We’ve always been a really strong defensive team. If you look at finals series of 2020, and I know they were shortened games and we couldn’t get it done in the second half of the grand final, but we were the highest scoring team of that finals series.”

Since then, and in essence, the Cats could score and at the same time the Cats could look like they were swimming in the reeds.

“You can cherry pick numbers a little bit, but the issue for us in our view, and we knew this last year as well, but it was difficult for various reasons to change,” he said.

“We thought, to go from the way we were playing when it wasn’t working well to playing a more attacking style when we needed to score was too much of a shift in our game.

“We don’t want to be a team who plays one mode and if that’s not working, then we’re going to turn it on its head and play a different way.

“The short answer is, ‘yes’, we are thinking about shifting some things to put more pressure on the opposition and if it means we get scored against a little bit more, we’re going to have to live with that.’’

Chris Scott addresses Cats players during their preliminary final loss to Melbourne in 2021.

SCOTT’S TAKE ON PREMIERS

An example offered by Scott illustrated the bogginess that has crept into Geelong’s game.

His point was that for a long time, going back to maybe 2004 and all the way to 2020, if the Cats were three goals down with 10 minutes to play, there was a certain degree of worry that they could not run over the opposition.

“I think that’s shifted a little bit towards the negative,’’ Scott said, “you wouldn’t be as worried anymore, our ability to score really quickly against the opposition hasn’t been good enough.”

Further to Scott’s conversation about balance, he dismissed the notion that Melbourne, for example, played risky, bold football in 2021, underscored by their 19 and 21 goals in the preliminary and grand final.

“Without being argumentative, I don’t think Melbourne plays risk football,” he said.

“I think they play, and even if you go back to when they were a pretty good team … in ’18 they beat us in the final and that period between ’18 and 2021, they were a high inside 50m team, really contested team, they got it in there enough but couldn’t finish off their work.”

They were then able, he said, to stabilise behind the ball with a fit Jake Lever and Steven May.

“We certainly didn’t analyse them as a team that was going to play risky football, where they scored, but if they turned it over we’d do them at the other end,” he said.

“We thought they played with pretty good stability behind the ball.

“I don’t think the best teams over the past 20 years played risky football, where if it didn’t work they got hammered the other way.”

Scott is a deep thinker of the game, but not a closed thinker. He says there two options for a coach.

“I can say I’m going to be dogmatic about how I think the game should be played and I will find players to fit that style or, and I think I’m this kind of coach, which is let’s look at the strengths we’ve got, the weakness we’ve got and a design a game style which maximises the good and minimise the bad,’’ he said.

“I know it to be true because I live it.’’

Chris Scott lifts the premiership cup with Geelong in 2011 – his first year as coach.

NEW FACES

Certainly, there’s a newness at Geelong this season and newness brings freshness, ideas, collective spirit and optimism

There’s new players and 16 new staff in the footy department of 51, including the return of Matthew Egan (assistant coach), Harry Taylor (high performance), James Kelly (assistant coach) and Shannon Byrnes (development), plus the arrival of Eddie Betts.

“The feeling I’ve got at the moment reminds me a little bit of where I was when I started,” Scott said.

“I said that last week and I’ve since asked myself is that true.

“I feel good, I feel optimistic, and the past couple of years have been a challenge for everyone, and we’ve had a longer preparation this year. But there are still some obvious challenges.

“Change was required for us, as it was back then (end of 2010).”

There will be personnel and positional changes on the field.

He has already flagged less time in the midfield for Joel Selwood.

Jeremy Cameron is gliding — “He’s doing things at training that we didn’t see at all last year,’’ Scott said.

Troubled recruit Tyson Stengle (23 years old) and Sam De Koning (20) will play at either end, and a bevy of young midfielders will be given opportunities.

In an internal scratch match last Thursday, youngsters Cooper Stephens, Max Holmes and Mitch Knevitt were, at stages, pitted against Selwood, Cam Guthrie and Brandon Parfitt in the centre square.

Geelong has used Mitch Knevitt in the midfield during internal scratch matches.

Holmes is the elite runner, Knevitt is a tall midfielder who was the club’s first selection in last year’s draft, and Stephens has had a super summer after injuries and Covid interruptions over two years.

De Koning has put on 17kg in two years and has spent his pre-season playing defence alongside Tom Stewart and Mark Blicavs.

If you’re talking more attacking footy, there’s the option of playing one of their creative ball users, Mitch Duncan or Cameron Guthrie, as a rebounding half-back.

Gary Rohan played back late last year with some success and, let’s be honest, his days as a forward are numbered.

Scott is enthused across the board — on field and off field — and not least by the arrival of new chief executive Steve Hocking.

Indeed, senior Geelong staffers said Scott was in a good place.

Asked what he thought they meant by that, Scott said: “I think there’s two reasons to get excited. You’re excited because everything is going just perfectly and you think we’re the best team in it, or there’s enough room for optimism and you can see the challenges that excite you.

“I don’t want to keep going back but that’s the way I felt (when I started).

“Then I was an unknown, slightly intimidated coach. Now, I’m a lot better coach.

“And there are some really obvious challenges I think we can overcome. And I find that energising.’’

Geelong training

Scott is energised by the arrival of the likes of Egan, Taylor and Kelly.

As an aside, a theory Scott had fallen out with Matthew Knights, Corey Enright and Matthew Scarlett, who all departed the club, was dismissed by a Cats official.

For the new arrivals, they were not told of the game style by members of the footy department because Scott had a grander plan.

He asked them what they thought of the recent game style, the list, “tell us what we should be doing differently”, “tell us what you think we can do to get it done in September”.

Sometime in the future, this exercise might be labelled a line-in-the-sand moment
“In terms of game style, we took about six weeks to say, ‘let’s approach this as if we’re a new group and if we’re just starting from scratch, so how would we do it?’,’’ Scott said.

“After six weeks, we would then overlay what we have done and why.

“It was interesting. The real positive of that is we didn’t spend much time explaining to them all the problems we thought we had with our list and the way we played. That encouraged optimism.

“You ask, ‘were my eyes and mind opened?’ Last year we spent a lot of time trying to mitigate issues we thought we might have, and we’re just trying to flip that a little bit.”

As is customary, Scott, or any coach for that matter, doesn’t expand on those issues.

His overwhelming optimism, he said, was not a coaching ploy to instil confidence or reassure his players.

“I would find it hard to fake it,’’ he said.

“I’ve been like that my whole life and sometimes it gets me into trouble.

“Gee, it works much better when you believe what you’re saying and we’ve got a combination of reasons to be optimistic and we’ve brought in optimistic people as well and I think they’ve really helped me.”