A “little niggle” has Geelong captain Joel Selwood in doubt for Sunday’s clash with wooden spoon-bound Adelaide on Sunday.
Cats coach Chris Scott says the issue isn’t related to a hamstring injury suffered against Collingwood in Round 7, but wouldn’t elaborate when asked which part of the body was a problem for the 32-year-old.
“There’s no great reason to go into detail, other than it’s just not my standard practice,” he said.
“These things are subject to change, and to give you a complete answer that you’d be satisfied with would require going into great detail, and even into things that are slightly above my head.
“So’s it better off to not tell you much at all, rather than give you partial information and have you extrapolate from there.”
Scott did concede the issue may cost Selwood ” a week or so”.
“And we’re just in the phase of the season with some short breaks coming up that would be crazy for us to push him when we’d like to see him play consecutive games hopefully going into a finals series; that’s the thinking,” Scott said.
“We haven’t ruled him out by any stretch of the imagination, but I just didn’t want you to be surprised and see that if he missed there might be something that is really going to hold him up.
“We don’t think that’s the case at all.”
Former St Kilda star Jack Steven will play after being managed out of the win over Port Adelaide, while Luke Dahlhaus (foot) is available after getting through a scratch match against Gold Coast on the weekend.
Geelong also expects to have big man Esava Ratugolea back.
He was managed out of the wins over North Melbourne and St Kilda before an adductor issue sidelined him from his planned return against Port Adelaide.
“We had every intention of playing him the third week (against the Power), and he just got a little bit sore late in the week, and we thought it was too big of a risk,” Scott said.
“And that proved to be a good move, we think, based on the way he moved five or six days ago.
“He’s looking good now, but he’s not a certainty. But, I would have thought, if he is available, we would probably play him.”
Carji Greeves Medal contender Cam Guthrie should be right to go after Scott revealed a corkie suffered against the Power forced him off the training track earlier this week.
“It didn’t really warm-up as well as he would have liked,” Scott said.
“It was always going to be a light session for him anyway, but he just called it a little bit earlier, and (there was) a few people there to see it, so it probably looked like it was a bigger deal than it actually was.”
Scott did rule out selecting former Crow Josh Jenkins to take on his former team, while Nakia Cockatoo will also have to wait another match for his long-awaited return.
Scott said a range of factors were against the Cats naming Cockatoo for his first AFL match since Round 3, 2018.
“The practice matches we’ve got at the moment aren’t as good as exposed second-tier form,” he said.
“We’re picking a team at the moment that are getting the job done; we think we’ve got some players who are performing really well.
“But probably the biggest issue is that we’re playing the long game with Nakia.
“He’s come off some serious injuries and missed a lot of footy, and we were always committed to him being close to the peak of his powers before we put him into the AFL team,
“We have made some decisions in the past to bring him back a little bit earlier than that, and, to be frank, that hasn’t worked.
“We’re backing in our decision-making even more strongly to take our time with him.”
Twitter: @tom_king79
