Heading into the final third of the home-and-away campaign, Brad Scott remains firmly focused on seeing week-to-week improvement out of his fielded 23.

Despite working with a challenging injury list in recent weeks, Scott doesn’t want to open himself to distractions or excuses as he looks to steady his side and attack the opportunities ahead in the next few games.

The rundown from Wednesday morning’s presser:

Scott on… reviewing the Gold Coast result

It sounds cliche, but we're just really focused on improving every day and I've got a really engaged group that are locked into that.

We had a great review of the Gold Coast game, not a great review in feeling necessarily good about it, but about what we did well, what we could have improved. We're making some errors through execution at the moment - it's not acceptable, but it is understandable in terms of the cohesion and probably some inexperience in our group.

What we have is a great intent and a great level of effort to deliver what we're coaching. That’s always very exciting for a coaching group to take some players who are relative blank canvases and watch them implement what we train.

We saw a fair bit of that on Saturday at Marvel, albeit certainly not accepting of the outcome, we put ourselves right in the frame at three-quarter-time to win the game.

Scott on… optimism going forward

The last couple of weeks, we've faced some challenges, no doubt. But we're seeing improvement in our young players, which always gives reason for optimism.

13 inside 50’s (in the last quarter) and an inability to convert those was a combination of a good opposition defending well, but also our inability to finish that off, and it would be very easy just to sit back and say, oh, well, that's youth, that's inexperience, but we don't want to go down that path. We think we've got players that have come into our team that are very capable and we'll continue to work with them on the execution.

Again, while we're not accepting of those execution errors, we are very, very pleased with the intent and the effort to deliver.

There's a lot for us to work with. Four Rising Stars, you know, (11) debutants, almost certainly more to come based on some of the form we've seen in the VFL.

Scott on… injuries 

Disappointingly, we lost Jye Caldwell for a period of time. He had surgery yesterday, Zach Reid had surgery Monday, so there's at least one change already.

In my experience with AFL football, the surgeons always think it went exceptionally well, so it's the same in this case. He's in a really positive frame of mind, he has intent to get back before the season's over.

The conversations with Darcy Parish and Kyle Langford at the moment, they're understandably very frustrated and they go into some pretty deep, dark places and I empathise because I've been there myself. I know what it's like and I can also assure them you come out of it too.

We've worked really hard with our guys who are injured. Apart from definitive guys with season-ending injuries, regardless of the way this season pans out, we want them attacking their rehab with an intent to get back and play this year.

Scott on… keeping his focus on performance

I've got to really focus on the things that I can control in the short-term. Clearly, I’ve got a hand in the bigger picture operations of the club, but primarily my role is to prepare the team to go out and execute on the weekend, that's where the majority of my focus is.

That's not to say the Club’s not doing the requisite work in all the areas that are disappointing for us at the moment. We'd like to have better availability and I can assure everyone the work is being done in that space, but my focus as head coach needs to be on preparing the 23 to play.

If I get dragged away into different parts of that, then I lose focus on what's most important for us right now. The bigger picture is really important as well, but I've got a high degree of confidence in the people that are entrusted in ensuring that part of our program is world class.

We are doing a power of work on it. We've got to create an environment where our players feel like they're getting the best chance to be the best they can be and the Club has its best chance for success, and it's very difficult to set the Club up for long-term success when we have the unavailability that we have at the moment.

I need to stay firmly in my lane, in terms of getting the team up to play each week and need to trust the processes that are going on in the background.

Scott on… ‘no excuses’

Also, I don't want to even subconsciously give our players an out. We’ll field 23 fit and available players this weekend that we think are very capable of getting the job done, and that goes for every week for the rest of the year.

We understand the situation we’re in - I think that’s patently obvious - but it's never been put forward as an excuse for the way that we want to play on the weekend.

I don't even want any subconscious excuses for our players in terms of our performance.

Scott on… creating an attractive environment

We're going through a difficult period at the moment, but the environment that you create for your players is critical and I’ve got no doubt that we can create the environment we want.

Will that involve some change? That’ll be for down the track, but we’ll also be very strongly focusing on what this Club offers and it offers a massive, loyal but understandably frustrated supporter base.

With passion and loyalty comes frustration when things aren't working. They go hand in hand, but also, we've been able to unearth players that we wouldn't have been able to see if we weren't in this situation.

I look and personally get very excited about not only the (11) debutants, but the improvement in a lot of players in roles that they haven't been able to play otherwise.

I see a lot of blue sky for us and I'm sure everyone else can too, if you're prepared to look beyond the extreme short-term.

Scott on… potential changes 

One part of the ground where we have some options is in the midfield.

Elijah (Tsatas) has had some difficult assignments over the last period of time, whether it be emergency, travelling emergency, ‘U-turn on the Tullamarine Freeway’ emergency and performed well, he’s held up his end of the bargain, so he's right in the mix this week.

As for Mason Redman, we'll see how he trains, but he’s progressed really well. If he gets through training well today, I’d expect him to play but we’ll take a no-risk approach at the same time.

Scott on… Nik Cox

We see it as really encouraging.

We would have been very unlikely to play him this year just because it's been a long recovery from his concussion. He’s still had some symptoms, albeit mild, so he's at a point where we need him symptom-free for a good month and then a good couple of months of training into him, which rules out this year anyway.

The news that we were hoping for was that he was going to be cleared to continue his career, and that's the news that we received. It’s actually given ‘Coxy’ a bit of a boost - for a pretty mild-mannered sort of guy, he's more optimistic than he's been in a couple of months.