GEELONG will give Patrick Dangerfield until later in the week to prove his fitness for round one, with the superstar midfielder considered "still a chance" to play despite his recent hamstring strain.

The Brownlow medallist suffered the minor injury in the Cats' JLT Community Series loss to Essendon two weeks ago, leaving his prospects to play against Melbourne this Sunday in limbo.

Dangerfield has remained hopeful he will be able to start in the Cats' season opener and Cats coach Chris Scott said the signs were positive for the 27-year-old. 

New Cat concedes he'll miss round one

"The short answer is he's still a chance. There are some people at our club, me included, who would like to be definitive now. So I guess it's a good sign in terms of his recovery where we're not in the position where we're saying 'He's not playing but we think he might be right for next week or the week after'," Scott said on Fox Footy on Monday.

"In his mind he doesn't want to rule it out. I think that's a really good sign for round two and three in particular.

"Whether it happens round one, more and more clubs are realising it's best to resist the temptation to see round one as the finishing line. You have to take a bit more of a longer view."

Dangerfield has had a strong run with injury throughout his illustrious career, playing 20 or more games in all bar one of the past nine seasons. 

Scott said the recovery period for the injury means even if Dangerfield does not make it for the MCG clash against the Demons, he looked clear for round two. 

"It does fit with the initial diagnosis which was that it was so minor that it was actually quite hard to work out whether he'd done anything significant or not," the coach said.

"It's even more complicated with guys who have never done hamstrings. He's never had a soft tissue injury in his life, so they tend to be a little bit confused when it first happens."

Scott has declared Gary Ablett a certain starter for the game against the Demons.

Ablett didn't feature in Geelong's pre-season series after suffering a hamstring strain in February and has been carefully managed since.

"He'll be fine, so unless ... no, I'll just say 'He's playing'," Scott said.