By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
GEELONG players went through a tough contested football training session this week as the side prepared to face Adelaide away after the bye.
Coach Chris Scott earlier identified Geelong’s contested ball performance as the benchmark for a strong performance against the Crows.
“We need to go close to matching them around the footy,” Scott emphasised.
“If we are okay around the ball we tend to play pretty well. In our poor performances we’ve been smashed.
“It’s going to be a challenge this week because Adelaide rank high in most of those areas, they’re a terrific centre bounce team, good stoppage team, good contested ball team.
“If you get killed round the ball and you’re defending from your back third the whole game you tend to be in trouble.
“We’ve got to think of ways to perform better in that area. And we need to put some of that theory out on the track.”
Jimmy Bartel took part in full training, raising hopes he could be close to a recall from his round three knee injury.
“He’s similar to the Andrew Mackie situation a few weeks ago, in that we felt he missed a fair bit of footy and we felt he needed to get either some footy in or more training,” Scott said.
“He (Mackie) got the extra week and a half on the track and he came back and played well.
“Jimmy’s been in full training for a couple of weeks so it’s more likely that we would bring him straight back in off that preparation.
“If he only had a week or so on the track, some match practice at a lower level would have been the way to go.
“He is better placed to play AFL footy straight away than if we had a game last week.”
Scott also signalled the recall of ruckman Dawson Simpson, saying he preferred to have a big, fit and in-form ruckman playing in every game.
Scott admitted having two weeks to stew on the loss to Melbourne in Corey Enright’s 300-game milestone was “more uncomfortable than I would have liked”.
“We’re itching to get back out there again,” he declared.
