By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
Geelong’s coaches hope their charges will snap out of holiday mode quickly against Brisbane in Sunday’s twilight game at the Gabba.
Cats players had returned refreshed from around the country as well as overseas, coach Chris Scott said.
“We’ve had a good break. We had this period planned for a long time,” he said.
“We weren’t rapt with the footy we were playing pre-bye, so we expect to come out and play better than that.
“Our physical preparation is such that we’ll be in good shape and we’ve just got to make sure now that we implement in games what we’ve been doing on the track.”
Geelong’s willingness to send players off on a holiday break follows its trend-setting player management mantra now being taken up by other clubs.
Their performance against Brisbane will be watched to see what impact the holiday break has on players, especially in solving the issues of slow starts and relying on burst football.
“We’re really open to working with our players. We’ve given them a fair bit of time off in one block and we trust them to do the right thing,” Scott explained.
“We were across everything the players were doing and we put a lot of thought into some of those decisions.
“We’re really comfortable they’ve all done the right thing and come back ready to go. We trust our 18-year-olds the way we trust our 28-year-olds.
“There are probably a few credits you get by virtue of experience but we treat them all like mature elite athletes.”
Scott admitted the one exception could be Brownlow medallist Jimmy Bartel, who coincidentally went the furthest by taking in NBA finals games in the US.
“His program over the break was well-planned,” Scott said.
“I’d be surprised if he doesn’t play great footy in the last half of the season.”
Scott said Bartel’s break “was a well-considered decision”.
“Jimmy has had some issues we’ve had to manage for last 18 months. He’s available to play if we need him but we’re concerned more than just this week.”
The good news is midfielder Taylor Hunt is likely to play after undergoing surgery to set a cracked collarbone six weeks ago.
“It’s probably a reasonable indication that we’re so comfortable with the training that he’s put in – it’s an injury that’s allowed him to run,” Scott said.
“He’s trained really well in match simulation and we don’t think that his footy touch is going to be too much of an issue.
“To be brutally honest with you, we’re probably leaning to playing him at AFL level more than not.”
Mark Blicavs, Harry Taylor and Steven Motlop would all slot back into the side, Scott revealed.
