Geelong coach to make the most of game lag to further friendships
The Cats will seek to further their premiership ambitions during a stint in a Perth hub with their game against Collingwood to draw the first major crowd of 2020.
Geelong coach Chris Scott believes a quarantine quirk will provide an ideal period for the Cats to finetune their premiership assault for later in the 2020 season.
After defeating premiership contender Brisbane at the SCG last week, the second-placed Cats will tackle Collingwood, another flag aspirant, at Optus Stadium on Thursday night.
While Western Australia is experiencing wild weather, up to 30,000 fans are expected to attend the game between the Victorian clubs in a match that will draw the first proper crowd of a troubled year.
The two clubs will then serve out the remainder of their two-week quarantine, which means they will not play their next matches against the Eagles and Dockers respectively for 10 and 11 days.
The extended break is the antithesis of what will happen in the weeks following as the AFL compresses the fixture to cram several games in while clubs are in hubs.
But Scott said the elongated period between games is something he has been craving from a coaching perspective, saying it provided an opportunity to create further cohesion between his players.
“In a way we have been craving that time together and this satiates that requirement to a degree,” he said.
“Right at the moment, the challenges don’t seem overly significant. We are in a pretty good environment here.
“I think if you were preparing for consecutive games in Perth and you had your perfect scenario, probably getting over and acclimatising in a high-performance environment would be pretty high up the list.
“Even the fact we are in quarantine does remove the temptation to get out and take your focus off what we are trying to do. Now not being able to get out could get old … but I certainly don’t sense that from our group at the moment.”
Geelong champion Patrick Dangerfield, who has been in outstanding form, praised the hub set-up in Perth.
The wintry spell forced the Cats to transfer training from Leederville Oval to a ground adjoining Optus Stadium that is usually used as a match-day car park.
While Collingwood is based at a golf course in Joondalup, the Cats are staying at a hotel at the Crown Casino.
On the rare occasion a hotel staff member is visible, they are wearing protective gear and “kitted up from head to toe”, according to Dangerfield.
A bar area adjoining the hotel has been turned into a common room where table tennis and PlayStations have been set up to help the players pass time.
Further afield the ballroom, which used to host the Hopman Cup Ball every New Year’s Eve, has been divided into separate dining and meeting rooms, while a makeshift gym has been set up.
No player is allowed to mingle with the public to prevent COVID-19 contamination, which has seen the WA Government and AFL arrange for a fenced off grass area for players to get some fresh air.
“You almost feel like an animal at a zoo, because you can only go in certain places, but I must say they have done an incredible job and it is remarkable to think it has been organised in a week,” Dangerfield said.
Hub tour 🨠Take a look around our Perth performance centre, where we're spending 14 days on lockdown, presented by @FordAustralia. pic.twitter.com/EV96B4pu86
— Geelong Cats (@GeelongCats) July 14, 2020
Dangerfield, who is the president of the AFL Players Association, is bracing for further discussions with the league this week about extending the stint clubs spend on the road in 2020.
He believes it is inevitable, given the deteriorating health outlook in Victoria and NSW, that clubs will be asked to spend seven weeks on the road instead of 32 days.
But the AFLPA will need its members, the majority of whom are currently in hubs, to agree to the extension before the league can move forward.
“My fear is if we don’t all actively engage in trying to get games away as best we can and still provide the quality it needs to be, making it up in the back end later in the season when there is so much unknown about lockdown and contagion, that is clearly a concern, so it makes sense to get games away here,” he told SEN.
The Magpies, meanwhile, have been out in full flock in Joondalup with Sherrins zooming back and forth across fairways and greens.
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley is another who expects the trip away to be extended, with the Magpies facing the prospect of playing matches in Perth before heading interstate.
“If Victoria was to continue its issues, we may go home for a bye situation and then out again,” he said on AFL 360.
“We can’t count our chickens at any stage or at any point at this stage. We are looking at the next five feet in front of us on a big hike.”
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You’d think we were in Melbourne ðŸ¤£â˜€ï¸ pic.twitter.com/81A8rPZwYR
— Collingwood FC (@CollingwoodFC) July 14, 2020
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