GEELONG coach Chris Scott says the perfect preparation for the 2020 premiership season doesn’t exist as AFL clubs scramble to get their players ready to emerge from the COVID-19 shutdown.
The AFL has allowed a three-week mini-preseason for clubs to prepare their players for the resumption of a compressed 17-round season as early as June.
Scott, who is confident the majority of his players won’t even need that long, will adjust his expectations of his group in line with the ever-changing AFL landscape.
“If you’re looking for perfection through this period you’re just going to end up frustrated,” Scott told SEN on Tuesday.
“My philosophy is ‘Good enough will have to do’ … if we aim for perfection that can get in the way of good enough and you end up with something that’s a really poor outcome.
“So assessing the individual status of the players is going to be really important.
“I suspect we would have 25 per cent of our players who are pretty much ready to go now.
“Then at the other end we might have 25 per cent we do need to do some remedial work with.
“Everyone, give or take, is coming from the same position and whether the preparation is ideal or not, as long as it’s similar enough for all the participants in the competition then I think we’re ok.”
Players were banished from their clubs and restricted to training on their own or with one teammate when the season was paused on March 22.
Most states outside Victoria have relaxed restrictions on gatherings of up to 10 people, although the AFL has decreed group training can’t restart until all 18 clubs are able to.
Scott is confident he can have all his players report to training at the club by Tuesday if Premier Daniel Andrews gives the green light when he reviews Victoria’s state of emergency on Monday, May 11.
“If the restrictions are eased to the point where we can do things in groups of up to 10 then I think it’s likely that we’d be back in at the club,” he said.
“But there would be some pretty severe restrictions around what you can and can’t do as well.
“I think it will be a long way from normality in seven days time but it will be a bit closer to normal footy training as opposed to what we’ve got now.”
(C) AAP 2020