Geelong coach Chris Scott says Port Adelaide’s push for Travis Boak to quickly decide his AFL future prompted the Cats’ weekend trip to Adelaide to make their case.
Scott expects a decision soon on whether Boak, the Power’s joint reigning best and fairest, will join the Cats.
The Power have reacted angrily to Scott and Geelong senior players Joel Selwood and Jimmy Bartel meeting with Boak in Adelaide on Sunday.
While it is no secret that Boak is weighing up a post-season move to Geelong to be near his family, the Power believe the Cats approach lacked subtlety.
But Scott said Boak needed to be able to make an informed decision.
“It would be a slightly different situation if Travis and Port Adelaide said ‘We’re not going to talk about it until the end of the year,'” Scott told reporters on Tuesday.
“Then we would respect that and wait until the end of the year as well.
“But he’s being pushed to make a decision, so he needs to understand all the options.”
Scott said the Cats had informed Port of the trip and had done nothing wrong.
“It wasn’t a clandestine mission,” he said.
“We certainly didn’t advertise it, we’d prefer that no one knew about it, we didn’t want to publicise the fact, but it’s no secret.”
He said the Power would be fairly compensated in a trade if Boak moves.
While 23-year-old Boak is not a free agent, Scott said with free agency coming in this year all clubs had to accept that aggressive recruiting would be universal.
He said all 18 clubs were already talking to rival players.
“As an industry we’ve got to be a little bit more mature than we have been in the past when it comes to the movement of players,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Cats coach remains unsure why Geelong’s first-quarter performances remain so poor.
The Cats were 34 points down by the first change in Saturday night’s loss to Collingwood and have won just two of their past nine first terms, despite winning five games over that stretch.
“I’m not 100 per cent sure that we have the answer, but we’re working at it,” Scott said.
Key forward James Podsiadly is some chance to return from an ankle injury against Essendon on Friday night.
