Scott in depth on Dons’ development, team connection, high performance structure

2025 has certainly provided an eventful season for Brad Scott.

Already coming into the year with plenty of change afoot at the Bombers, the Senior Coach has had to play almost every hand at his disposal in the wake of their large injury list, fielding all but four players on his list at different stages.

With 13 debutants and another large chunk of youngsters earning extra senior level exposure in the back half of this campaign, Scott has enjoyed seeing their development, even if it’s come in circumstances he couldn’t pre-empt at the start of the year.

The talking points from Scott’s chat on ABC Sport over the weekend:

Scott on… team connection, unearthing talent

14:34

The current reality is that 50 per cent of our starting (forward) six weren’t on our list six weeks ago, so that presents some challenges in terms of connection.

We certainly didn’t plan this at the start of the year, I don’t think any team sets out to play 42 players and 13 debutants, but we certainly want to expose some players and improve our list, and you can only do that from seeing players play at AFL level – otherwise it’s just potential that you see on the training track and at VFL level.

We’ve certainly unearthed some players that we think are going to be long-term players for us.

Scott on… list and development strategy

We started the year with very close to the largest number of players in that 23-to-27-year-old demographic and it was an explicit aim for us to develop those players.

We needed a lot of those players to take the next step from being good contributors to very good players.

Injuries have certainly stalled that progress, but it’s opportunity for others. We’ll definitely look different at the start of next year than we would’ve anticipated at the start of this year.

00:38

Scott on… preventing injuries

We’ve been doing a hell of a lot of work on that and obviously there will be change in that area for us going forward.

There are some things that we can improve and are controllable, but can we control Will Setterfield getting his foot stomped on and rupturing a Lisfranc, can we control Nic Martin getting nudged and slipping on astroturf to do an ACL?

My view is that it hasn’t all been controllable factors, (it’s) resulted in a situation where it’s all come together at the same time unfortunately.

Scott on… Angus Clarke and Archie Roberts as standouts

Angus Clarke is always one that stands out to me in that scenario, we all say we’re delighted to pick a player in the draft (that) we didn’t think would be there at the pick he was.

Two years ago, we unearthed Archie Roberts in the 50’s – we traded up to get him and we think he’s a fantastic prospect for us and already at 19 years of age, a leader for us in our Club.

‘Clarkey’s the same, we were rapt to get him at that pick but we thought he’d need to develop for a year or two in the VFL, we’ve had to expose him straight away and he kicked three goals on debut.

He’s got a lot of work to do but he’s a player we ideally don’t want to see go out of our side, regardless of our injury situation.

Scott on… Zach Merrett’s AFL 360 comments

It’s always really important.

Zach himself is probably flabbergasted at the discussion [of seeking a trade] because talking to me, he’s just like ‘I don’t know where it comes from, I couldn’t be more committed’.

Sometimes, regardless of what you think, you need to be explicit about what your views are.

I’ve always had the view that I’m going to set the vision, set the environment and hold players accountable to that vision, but ultimately players have got to make the commitment themselves.

03:06

When your Captain is being questioned about if he’s all in on the Club, as exasperated as that makes Zach, I think the explicit public comments just puts it all to bed.

It’s great for the Club but also great for his teammates – there’s no ambiguity there, he’s the leader of our team.

I’ve regularly said to Zach, if we’re going to improve as a football team, the Captain and Coach need to be in lock step, and we certainly are.

Scott on… managing Nate Caddy

His workload has been so high for a second-year player.

The medical staff are quite rightly concerned about our availability status at the moment, I’m not going to keep pushing Nate out just to get injured himself.

We’re certainly not in a situation where we can rest players by choice but we had to leave Goldstein and Caddy out because we’re trying to mitigate getting through five-day breaks and a long season on limited preparation.

Scott on… Sean Murphy’s departure

We really felt that once the Club had made the decision that there would be change in the high performance area, the most respectful thing to do was to inform ‘Murph’ as soon as possible.

Being the quality person he has and is, he’s really keen to see out the season and not leave the team short – that’s the respectful thing for him, he can move on and think about the next phase of his life while finishing out the rest of the season.

We’re also free to go full scale into looking at how we’re going to structure up our high performance department next year.

I know it’s a hard time at the moment for Bombers fans, but hopefully they’re getting some enjoyment about seeing the young players that are going to be the stars of our future.

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