After a spirited effort against the Swans in defeat at the SCG, Senior Coach Brad Scott looks ahead to Essendon's Friday night clash against Geelong. 

Scott highlights the positive opportunities that lay ahead for the side this week and reiterates the importance of finishing the season off strong.

All the talking points from Tuesday morning's presser:

Scott on... Geelong matchup 

(Geelong are) a really complete unit right across the ground, so it can be it can be really daunting task to go down there and (Jeremy) Cameron in the form that he’s in, Geelong and the form that they're in.

But we actually like to think of it as an unbelievable opportunity for us to go out and test ourselves against one of the best teams. 

I remind the players all the time what a privilege it is to play footy, full stop. But then I think it's an extra special privilege to play for Essendon. Every time you pull on this jumper it's a privilege and we've got a responsibility to go out and compete like our life depends on it.

(We want to do) that on Friday night against a really good opponent makes it's more of a privilege and that's why we will be attacking it. 

Scott on... Nate Caddy

(Caddy's) had a lingering issue, we’ll always put his best interest at heart and really for Nate that’s clearly his long-term interests. 

The reality is he's a week-to-week proposition in terms of how he recovers from training and games. We've got to make decisions based on how he's feeling, but also his continuity of training.

He wasn't able to train last week and we didn't feel it was the right thing to play him. So we'll look after his long-term future, but we're not prepared at this stage to say that he's playing his last game of the year. 

Scott on... Kyle Langford

I expect Kyle Langford to do a fair bit of training today with ideally a view to play some VFL minutes this week.

That would be the best case scenario. 'Langers' has been fantastic in his rehab, he's had a really strong intention of returning to play. We probably do have to fight this view, when we're out of finals calculations a lot of people probably think, what's the point in bringing these guys back?

We need some senior players around our younger players, and 'Langers' is a member of our leadership group and a really important part of our team, so if we can we can get him back into our team, we'd like to do that. 


Scott on... list management 

Teams don't start the year with 47 players on their list, but that's where we find ourselves at the end of the year. Obviously, having four mid-season draft picks all come onto our list means that we've got a bit of a squeeze for these spots.

There is a challenge in that space and Matt Rosa and his team are currently working through that, but we when we took the four picks in the mid-season draft, we genuinely hoped that we'd have a real challenge and it would present some good problems for us because I think all four mid-season draftees have shown some really good signs and some real promise. 

We’re looking to improve our list all the time and I imagine, you know, that the top four on the ladder at the moment are working extremely hard to improve their list, they're not getting complacent about where they sit at the moment, they're all looking to improve and where they're looking to improve as well.