GEELONG coach Chris Scott will stay open-minded to all selection possibilities this September as premiership trio Tom Hawkins, Cam Guthrie and Sam De Koning stake their claims for a preliminary final recall and star Tom Stewart prepares to return.

The Cats stood up with six September debutants on Thursday night, earning a home preliminary final and a week off after handing Port Adelaide its heaviest September defeat since the 2007 Grand Final.

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While Stewart was a late withdrawal because of illness, Scott said the Cats were already leaning towards a conservative call not to play him because of a hamstring issue and he shapes as an immediate inclusion in two weeks.

Hawkins, Guthrie and De Koning, meanwhile, will push ahead with VFL games this week in an effort to break back into a team that had no weak links at Adelaide Oval in a September boilover.

"We think about all the ways in which it could work, but always have a bias towards sort of the longer term," Scott said on Thursday night.

"Now, it gets a point with some of those guys where the longer term is gone and you've only got a couple of weeks to go, so you need to be a bit more aggressive. But we're not there yet, and that was why we made the decisions we did.

"Stay optimistic, stay open minded, keep all the options on the table, and make good decisions in the moment. Resist the temptation to forecast too much."

Scott said the Cats were confident Stewart would be available after completing a full training session on Monday, but they were still weighing up his selection on Wednesday night when he came down with a flu.

De Koning, meanwhile, was overlooked after a variety of factors, including a five-day break following his VFL return and the fact he underwent minor knee surgery before missing the last three matches of the season.

The result was a final 23 that included six Cats playing in their first finals, including Shaun Mannagh, Lawson Humphries, Jack Bowes, Ollie Dempsey, Shannon Neale, and late inclusion Oisin Mullin.

"They haven't shown any signs of getting ahead of themselves, which I think is the most important thing, but they haven't shown any signs of being overawed," Scott said of the group.

"But it's the biggest test they've had so far and it's nice to see them come through it.

"It's easy to say it's just another game, but you'd have to be not paying attention if you didn't realise at least the stakes.

"You just have so many people in your ear telling you how different it is, and our job internally is to remind them that it's not that different."

Thursday night's win followed two qualifying final losses for Geelong against Port, in 2020 and 2021, while the Power also had the Cats' measure in round nine at GMHBA Stadium.

Scott said that most recent six-point loss had played a key role in prompting the Cats to analyse their own methods during a mid-season slump that included six losses in seven games. 

"We just have so much respect for what they can do when they're hot, and last time we played them down in Geelong they were hot early," the coach said. 

"If anything, that made us think hard about how we were playing at the time.

"We were confident we were going into a finals series in good shape, but better for the lessons we learned during a lean patch we had, and the Port game down in Geelong was probably in the middle of that."

Asked whether the Cats should be hosting a preliminary final at the Geelong home ground, rather than the MCG, the coach was diplomatic.

"My position's been you should play your home games wherever you want, and the AFL run the final series. They've got to work out whether that's the right thing or not and they're balancing a whole lot of things that I don't think about that much," he said. 

"They've got the good of the game front of mind and what's best for a whole range of stakeholders, and all I care about is the Cats. It's logical that we would disagree when we have those different perspectives.

"But a prelim final, why not? It's a pretty good stadium.

"What I will say is, prelim finals will be played at some point at the Gold Coast, or at Giants Stadium or Hobart."