“It was a slow start, but we did a fair bit right and it was a really competitive game and a good result; 63 points is a pretty good margin to win that game by in the end,” Thompson said after the Cats’ seemingly effortless win over Richmond at Telstra Dome.
“We just never got carried away with ourselves at any stage. We had a reasonable lead for most of the night, apart from the first quarter, and you’d have to say that we just kept chipping away at it.
“[We] kept putting as much time into our defensive side as we did into our attacking side; that was probably the most pleasing thing.”
The Tigers weren’t able to apply a great deal of forward pressure on the Geelong back line after quarter time, which allowed Matthew Scarlett a fairly easy time of it in his 200th AFL match.
“I did [mention that]. I told the team that they probably should put every effort into winning this game for this man because he has been such an important person for the club,” Thompson said.
“He’s an on-field role model and he’s just been amazing; a little bit of who we are is because of people like him, [but] I’m biased because I’ve coached him and seen him play and seen him develop and I’ve seen him take full-back into a new era.
“I’ve never seen a defender play such an attacking role and have attacking influences on a game of footy while he’s playing on the best player from the opposition who kicks the most goals. I said openly this week that I think he’s changed the face of back line play; he’s an outstanding player.”
Thompson praised resilient tagger Cameron Ling who lowered Nathan Foley’s colours in his first game back from a fractured cheekbone and confirmed the side will be further boosted by the return of Gary Ablett for Friday night’s clash with Melbourne.
“We were pretty open this week, he did train on Wednesday night and he was fine doing a lot of things,” he said.
“He was a little bit sore changing direction so we decided together that he wouldn’t play, [but] this morning he did everything at training so we’d expect that he’d play.”
In other injury news, Thompson forecast another week on the sidelines for Paul Chapman and David Wojcinski as they continued to recuperate from their respective hamstring and Achilles complaints.
