Western Bulldogs captain declared fit despite knee and heel concerns for Port Adelaide clash in AFL round 9; Brad Scott urges Essendon Bombers to heed ‘whiteboard’ lessons and backs Nate Caddy after ‘mediocrity’ comments
Updated ,first published
The whiteboard listed the strengths and weaknesses of Essendon players, including Zach Merrett and Kyle Langford, who were deemed “selfish”, Sam Durham for being a “hot head”, and a reference to former Lion Jaxon Prior’s only strength being his girlfriend.
Lions coach Chris Fagan has said there was nothing malicious behind the comments, while Scott said on Wednesday there had been no need for the Lions to issue a “personal apology”.
However, Scott now wants his players to use the Lions’ feedback to their advantage.
“I said post-game it’s an issue for Brisbane to deal with. My understanding is they do that for every club, we’re just the club that had it published,” Scott said.
“From our perspective, it probably does give me an opportunity to talk to our players about certain things.
“It forces me also to follow up with certain players about what we think of them because that’s more important, but don’t ignore the external views.
“Whether that’s public views but certainly when that comes from an opposition club who analyse you. You can choose to just ignore it and pretend it’s wrong, or you can think about it and analyse it and if that’s the perception, go about changing it.”
Scott said Prior was fine but had wished “that it didn’t happen, and he didn’t have to deal with it”.
As the struggling 1-7 Bombers prepare to face GWS at Engie Stadium on Saturday, Scott also said he backed Nate Caddy’s raw post-match comments on 3AW, where the frustrated forward declared he was tired of “mediocrity” at Essendon amid a years-long rebuild.
Caddy has won less than a third of his 34 AFL matches, Scott embracing the competitiveness of his athletic forward.
“I loved it. I talk to Nate a lot about his competitiveness, his quite explicit desire to lead our forward line as a third-year player,” Scott said.
“He’s explicit in his desire to lead the club into a period of success, and he’s hungry for that. He’s impatient, and I am so excited about that because he’s the ultimate competitor.
“He wants to do that with Essendon, he loves the place, he loves the environment, and while he’s young, he’s not in the category of trying to establish his career.
“He’s now switched from being excited about playing AFL footy to now, ‘I want to drive this team forward’. I have seen that growth in him almost week-by-week this year.”
While former Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has suggested Caddy’s comments could indicate he wanted to chase success elsewhere, Scott insisted that was not the case, nor the case with other emerging Bombers.
“Not in my experience, being in the game as a head coach for whatever it is … I haven’t seen that,” Scott said.
“I have coached, the majority of the time, I’ve coached young developing sides. We’ve recruited guys who are fully invested, and they are, taking in the Nate example, starting to take responsibility of the fortunes in the club’s future.”
Caddy is contracted until the end of 2028.
The two injuries Bontempelli is carrying
Andrew Wu
Western Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli has another injury concern but has been declared fit to play against Port Adelaide on Friday night.
Dogs coach Luke Beveridge has revealed Bontempelli is also battling a heel problem on top of the knee issue that he has been carrying since the heavy defeat to Geelong three weeks ago.
Veteran Tom Liberatore will need a month to recover after undergoing knee surgery, but his future is still clouded while he remains under concussion protocols.
Bontempelli began training alongside ruckman Tim English in the Bulldogs’ rehab group and took only a limited part in the club’s main session on Wednesday, as forecast by Beveridge.
“It’s pretty obvious to you he’s had a sore knee, but he’s had a bruised heel that he’s been dealing with,” Beveridge said.
“That’s the main thing I’ve been worried about. It’s the main reason he was limping a bit in the game just gone, but he’s been able to deal with that, manage it a little bit with our medicos, and he’s pretty confident he should be available.”
Bontempelli is one of the most durable players in the competition, missing only 12 games since his debut in 2014. Coming off four straight losses, the Dogs do not have the luxury of giving their superstar player a week off to rest.
“It’s a pretty high bar as far as the pain threshold for him with discomfort, and he wants to play,” Beveridge said.
“We’re not going to talk him out of doing that. He’d be the first to tell us. He’s missed a game here and there, as you know, and he missed the start of last year because he had to, but if he’s really compromised in anything, then he definitely won’t play, and we’re not at that point at the moment.”
English returned last round after missing three games with a knee injury. He spent the first part of training running on the boundary line but joined in later drills.
Veteran midfielder Adam Treloar, who missed the loss to Fremantle while being managed, will not return this week or play in the VFL due to Footscray having a bye.
“His high-intensity running side of his game, which has always been a great strength of his, is just compromised at the moment,” Beveridge said. “So he’s working out whether he can get to that point where it’s really going to challenge opposition midfields at AFL level.”
Coaches query AFL’s psych mandate
Andrew Wu, Jon Pierik
Senior coaches have cast doubts over the practicality of the AFL’s mandate for clubs to appoint a full-time psychologist as part of the league’s plan to strengthen mental health resources for players.
Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge and his former counterpart at Port Adelaide Ken Hinkley have both questioned the suitability of having one professional managing an entire list, while Essendon coach Brad Scott called for the medical funding to be provided by the AFL.
The league on Tuesday pledged to implement a raft of measures to improve industry-wide healthcare standards as it announced a $75,000 fine to Carlton for their handling of Elijah Hollands in a game last month.
A key action was for clubs to appoint a full-time psychologist in each of their male and female programs.
The Bulldogs employ a psychologist but, like many clubs, have players who also speak to professionals outside the organisation. Beveridge said it was “absolutely critical” staff and players supported each other.
“It’s also your senior high-performance management into your footy directorship that needs to continue to oversee that and make sure everyone’s empowered to look after each other,” Beveridge said.
“I’m not sure what that means with that sort of outcome, and that suggestion that it’s going to be mandated. We’ll wait for more information on it.”
Beveridge and Hinkley, Port’s coach from 2013-25, said clubs would struggle to match the remuneration psychologists receive for running their own practice.
Hinkley applauded the league for making change but said having just one psychologist for players was not the best option.
“We’re not getting the best doctors now because of the cost and the incomes they earn outside of AFL football,” Hinkley, Port’s coach from 2013-25, said on SEN.
“I think some of the challenges we have to realise is these professionals earn high-level money – and so they should because they’ve gone through their studies to get to this level – but we need to understand from club land that one professional might not work.
“We have boys and girls in our programs, and there’s a lot of things we have to consider about each individual’s mental health.
“I don’t think we can ever have a mistake-free program, but we can eliminate as much as we possibly can so we don’t have to witness what’s happened in the last couple of weeks.”
Scott said he hoped the extra medical aid was fully funded by the league.
“I applaud the review of club resources but, without wanting to flog a dead horse, we’ve had soft cap cuts over a six-year period. And, yeah, there’s this complex formula of exemptions and things that the AFL deem more important than others … whether that be setting a maximum spend now for mental health and wellbeing,” he said.
“But, personally, it gets very frustrating when the AFL are reactive to something and decide now you must spend on this after cutting a soft cap and dictating what we can and can’t do with our money.
“So, clubs get held responsible, as Carlton have been in this case, and then the AFL come over the top and mandate things.
“So, that’s been a constant challenge that soft caps have been cut and clubs are forced to decide where to allocate money, and then the AFL have an incident and respond like this … I don’t know the detail yet, so I’m somewhat reluctant to comment, but all I’d say is I hope it’s fully funded.”
The AFL lifted the soft cap by $750,000 per club this year, taking it to about $7.925 million, with another rise of $350,000 next year.
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Jon Pierik is a sports journalist at The Age. He covers AFL and has won awards for his cricket and basketball writing.Connect via X or email.
