A CONSERVATIVE approach from Geelong has Patrick Dangerfield's sights set on a return from his injured hamstring against Hawthorn on Easter Monday.
A "pragmatic" Dangerfield joined in match simulation on Friday and will train again on Sunday, exactly a fortnight after hurting it against Essendon in the Cats' second JLT pre-season match.
Superstar Cat misses round one
"He feels as if he could've played but it's a more complicated decision than that," Scott said on Friday.
"There's still a little bit of time pre-game, so there is every chance that we might look back on the work that he does on Sunday and think it was a mistake not to play him.
"That conservative mistake is a much better one in our mind than the aggressive mistake with a long season ahead of us.
"He has zero soft tissue (injury) history, it's just a fact that the biggest predictor of soft tissue injury is previous injury.
"All of those things added together, despite his rapid improvement, meant that it was just too big of a risk to consider."
Scott has circled the round two clash against the Hawks in 10 days' time for his first game of the season.
"I think so (he'll play), it's really hard to say definitively but it's always a good sign when they're very close the week before that they'll come up the next week."
