No excuses as Cats face well-rested Port

Geelong won’t use the AFL fixture as an excuse if Thursday night’s clash against Port Adelaide at Simonds Stadium doesn’t go their way.

The Cats are coming off a six-day break following their win over the Western Bulldogs, while the Power enjoyed a bye round after their historic win over Gold Coast in China.

But coach Chris Scott isn’t interested in arguing the merits of pitting his team against a side coming off a 10-day rest.

“We’ve said publicly a number of times that we won’t be a club to use the draw or six-day breaks as an excuse for poor performance … we’ll be ready to perform,” Scott said on Tuesday.

“The draw is so complicated and it is really, really easy to find the faults in it and it is much, much harder to propose the solutions.

“I think in principle the AFL tries to reduce those sorts of scenarios. In this particular situation I guess it’s unprecedented.

“One team is coming off the bye, one team is coming off a six-day break, but the team coming off the bye went to China so I think that would have had some sort of impact as well

“There would be a little bit of a sense of the unknown.

“I think the fixture stuff is a little bit overplayed publicly. We’re ready to play well and we won’t make excuses if we don’t.”

The third-placed Cats opened a refurbished Simonds Stadium with a hard-fought win over the Dogs to snap a three-game losing run, with Port back in sixth spot with just one less win.

Scott is wary of the Power’s multi-pronged attack and will go in without a key weapon of his own after Nakia Cockatoo injured a hamstring against the Dogs.

“He is unavailable this week … the early signs are that it’s very minor,” Scott said.

“I wouldn’t rule him out for the following week at this stage, which reflects how minor we think it is.

“But, as I say over and over again in this forum, young players that we value really highly, we don’t take risks with.”

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