Geelong coach Chris Scott has conceded that strong form in the VFL won’t necessarily warrant a recall to the club’s AFL team.
Several players, including Mitch Knevitt and Jhye Clark, are consistently playing well at state league level, where the Cats are almost unbackable favourites to finish the home-and-away season on top of the ladder, sitting ten points clear with five matches to play.
However, Scott says individual performances are “only one part of the puzzle”.
“There are other inputs there that we’ve got to think about,” he said. “It is a harsh reality that I’m not comfortable with, to be honest.
“But sometimes the guys that are playing the best aren’t necessarily the ones that come up because there are other factors like the roles we’re looking for and the spots that might open up in the AFL team.”
Playing with a partially torn ACL, Gryan Miers’ two performances in the VFL since he was listed as being managed out of the AFL team last month have produced 30 and 27 disposals, respectively.
“It’s a bit of a confusing one for all of us at the moment,” Scott said. “We do have a plan that we’re working through that we’re confident we’ll have him at his best really soon.
“So, a bit of that’s a role we play him in as well. There’s some responsibility that we, as a coaching group in particular, have to take there.
“For one reason or another, it just hasn’t quite been working out.
“We went down the path of a little bit of a circuit breaker and a bit more of a, I’d call it a medium-term plan to sort of get him firing again.
“But again, (we’re) optimistic about how that’s going to play out.”
Despite the Cats losing four of their past five outings, which has seen them tumble from third to seventh on the ladder, Scott rejected suggestions that Geelong needs to make adjustments to its line-up ahead of Saturday’s clash with the GWS Giants at Engie Stadium.
“I push back on the idea that we need to make changes,” he said. “That’s a very subjective position, and some people might feel that strongly.
And they might be right, but they also could be wrong.
“We’re not in the position where we think we have to make changes.”
X: @krockfootball
