GEELONG coach Chris Scott remains adamant the Cats are not flirting with their form by continually changing their team as the finals approach.

Many of the club's veterans have sat out games to rest slight injuries, and that policy continued when James Podsiadly and Josh Hunt were left out of the team that played Melbourne on Saturday afternoon.

Podsiadly, who suffered a head knock the previous week against Richmond, and Hunt (sore back) would both have been declared fit to play if it was finals time.

"A couple of great coaches said to me, 'Never flirt with your form', and that's why our system is so important to us," Scott told his former boss Leigh Matthews on afl.com.au's Talking Footy program.

"It's almost a cliché these days, but your system is more important than your personnel.

"If a player goes out of one position, then a young player comes in who tries to fulfill that role in a similar way."

However, in a wide-ranging interview with the man under whom he played in two premierships at the Brisbane Lions, Scott refused to concede that Geelong was resting players.

"I've taken umbrage to the word 'rested'," he said. "We haven't really rested many players.

"We had a question to answer at the start of the year: How do we bring in young players, so we can prepare for the future, while also maintaining the level of our older players?

"We made a conscious decision that for a big group of our senior players 25 or 26 games in the season probably wasn't best for them.

"In round one we chose not to play Cameron Ling and Paul Chapman when they probably could've played, but they hadn't had a good preparation.

"They're examples of players that we decided not to take a risk with, and that's happened most weeks.

"So I can't think of an occasion where we've taken a player out of a game when they're absolutely 100 per cent fit and right to play."