After a commendable display against the Cats at GMHBA Stadium last Friday, Senior coach Brad Scott is keeping his focus on the team delivering high quality performances and making the most of every opportunity that comes Essendon’s way. 

Scott speaks on the importance of upkeeping a strong and positive outlook for the remainder of the season, and touches on the integral role that the loyal Bomber Army have played in maintaining high spirits amongst the team. 

All the talking points from Tuesday morning’s presser:

Scott on… maintaining a positive attitude and Bomber spirit 

You've got two choices, you can feel sorry for yourself, or you can do something about it. 

You can blame people, and everyone wants someone to blame, and our injury situation’s here, everyone's looking to string someone up in the town square and blame someone. 

No one is to blame for Zach Merrett breaking his hand. No one is to blame for Archie May rolling his ankle, Will Setterfield from being stomped on, Nic Martin from being nudged over the boundary line doing an ACL.

Our attitude internally is that we can feel sorry for ourselves, we can say how unfair this is, or we can respond in the only matter that we’re capable of, which is going out competing to the best of our ability with a ‘no excuse’ mentality and getting something out of the rest of this year.  

There will be people who say, you've got nothing to gain, well I disagree with that. We've got an enormous amount to gain. Playing Isaac Kako in the midfield last week, we’ve already got gains from that.

Our fans, while understandably frustrated, particularly with the injury situation, being frustrated with where we sit on the ladder, they still turn up. 

I believe the AFL have announced seven million fans have attended games (this season), almost one million of those have been at our games. 

So our fans are as resilient and loyal as any in the competition, and those loyal fans are going to watch our young boys play - who are going to make them proud one day - so we’ve got an enormous amount to gain. We want our fans to turn up and watch these young men play, who are going to be very good players for us. 

Scott on… Zach Merrett’s injury

It's an unfortunate situation, it carries on a bit of an unfortunate trend.

We're hopeful it's a one-week injury, he’s had surgery, that was a success. We're expecting him to be available next week but obviously miss this week.

I wouldn't be able to put Zach out, even if I wanted to, he’s our captain and he's our inspirational leader and as soon as he found out about the surgery, he wanted the surgery within the hour so that he could get back. 

That's just the competitor that he is, he wants to get back and lead the team as soon as possible, so that's the sort of attitude and the inspiration that we really want and need at the moment. 

Scott on… Archie May and Nate Caddy 

Archie May has ruptured a ligament in his ankle, a couple of ligaments, so he’ll miss at least two, possibly two-to-three weeks.

We're not prepared to pull him out for the year, but he certainly won't play this week and most likely won't play next, but we'll be rehabbing him as diligently as we can to get him back to the last game.

(Caddy’s) got some chronic groin soreness. We're not prepared to rule him out for the year, but it's unlikely, he definitely won’t play this week, unlikely next week. 

(Caddy’s injury) won’t require a surgical intervention, it'll be a gradual rebuild and we think that it'll make a full recovery prior to Christmas.

Again, I understand there’s probably arguments – ‘why would we push to get him back?’, and the only half-joking answer is that we need to fill the team. But in all seriousness, we want an attitude with our players that they're rehabbing with a mindset to get back to playing. 

That doesn't mean that we're going put them at undue or unnecessary risk. But we’re not conceding. We firmly believe we’ve got a lot to gain out of the next three games, and we want players who are up for the fight.

Scott on… Dylan Shiel’s tribunal case

It seems like it's a bit of a test case. It's been ungraded and sent to the tribunal. 

But it looks to me like it's a hard one for the MRO to come to a decision on, so they’ve sent it to the tribunal to get their opinion. 

We have a high level of confidence in our case, though.

Scott on… Sam Draper

(Draper’s) got a massive decision to make and the last conversation I had with him only a day or two ago was, you take as long as you need to make your decision, and it's a huge decision for him. No one should pressure him.

That's been my view all the way along. I see a guy who loves Essendon and has got a big decision to make for his career and clearly, we hope he stays, but we understand the environment that we're in.