By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
CHRIS Scott’s fears of his team stalling became reality against Brisbane last Sunday.
Geelong’s chief mechanic had been telling all and sundry the the Cat’s engine had a problem but not everyone believed him, or if they believed him they did not worry too greatly.
A few more worriers are travelling in the Geelong wagon this week as it comes up against a well-tuned Fremantle.
Key navigator Steve Johnson will be missing at a time the vehicle can least afford him gone.
Passengers are unsure just how worried to be – at least they don’t have much territory to cover, being at home under lights.
Despite the distant venue, Geelong did not run out of petrol at the Gabba.
The normally purring V8 put on its customary short burst of speed but could not find the brakes to slow the Brisbane juggernaut.
Scott displayed all the fury of a Mark Webber climbing out of his formula one car after another mechanical failure.
The bonnet has been up and the Geelong wagon on the hoist this week, with all systems undergoing a stringent safety check.
Commentators have characterised it as more of a reality check.
They point to the evenness of the competition – at least Sydney has been blushing as deeply as Geelong this week.
Scott was adamant the detailed vehicle inspection had revealed some reasons for the sputtering performance – but he was unwilling to release the report.
“We’ve worked on fixing the things we need to fix and we go into this week optimistic about playing well,” he said.
“I’d love to give you more detail than I’m going to but unfortunately I’m not going to dig down into the specifics for the whole world.
“We’re across what we need to be better at. We’ve addressed them; we’re not shying away from it.
“It’s a combination of things. The numbers require a bit more investigation, things we’ve been doing with the contested and attacking part of the game that haven’t been up to scratch, the same defensively.
“It’s just a little more acute and a little more obvious to outsiders when you get scored against.
“I could walk you through everything we’ve got on our mind this week but I’m not going to.”
Scott said responsibility for the dramatic deceleration devolved throughout the whole club.
“We need to put the responsibility on our younger players as well and our young coaches. We’re a little bit embarrassed about the performance,” he said.
“I’d like to think we haven’t been kidding ourselves, players and coaches included. There’s a little bit of reality in the fact that we played some great football at times but the bottom line is it hasn’t been consistent and inconsistent footy is not sustainable.
“We’ve been defensively poor at times and that culminated in an extremely bad quarter of footy.”
Scott nominated Billie Smedts, Josh Caddy, Trent West and Nathan Vardy as “viable options” to play Fremantle.
