Geelong coach Chris Scott has publicly delivered a blunt assessment of absent premiership forward Tyson Stengle, warning that the club's empathy has limits. Stengle has not played at AFL level since the 2024 grand final against Brisbane and has managed just one VFL game this season.
Scott's honest assessment
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Scott said Stengle remains "miles off" being available for selection. "So it sort of hasn't crossed my desk and I suspect it really won't until that becomes a bit more of a viable situation," Scott said. "We're not there yet."
Scott was expansive in his critique, acknowledging the difficulty of professional football but stressing the club's high-performance expectations. "I've got so much admiration for the players that can just persevere through the ups and downs as well as they do," Scott said. "It is a bit of a surprise to me you don't have more players just saying: 'Look, I'm finding this too tough at the moment'.
"We'd like to make things as easy as we possibly can because, let's be honest, most of the time it's going to be bloody hard work. And my take on where Tyson's at, is that's how he's feeling about his sort of football life at the moment: it's just all a little bit hard for him."
Limits to support
However, Scott made clear the Cats cannot provide indefinite support. "And so, there is a limit to our support with that, because we're like, 'Hey man, we empathise with you, this is a tough game'," the two-time premiership coach said. "But there are limits to where our empathy takes us because we're not a charity, as much as we'd like to be."
Stengle's situation became more complicated when 7NEWS Melbourne's Xander McGuire reported last week that Stengle was seen at a Melbourne nightclub days before what would have been his second VFL clash on June 20. He subsequently missed the flight to the Gold Coast and was omitted from the VFL team that faced Southport, with the club citing illness as the reason.
Club or AFL matter?
The flag-winning goalsneak's status remains unclear, with Scott and the Cats suggesting it is an AFL issue, while the league maintains it is primarily a club matter. Asked whether Stengle's scenario was an AFL or club matter, Scott replied: "It's not me ... there are probably other people that you should put that question to."
Scott emphasized the balance between player welfare and performance. "Our role in these situations, we talk a lot about really supporting players. You shouldn't mistake the real priority that we place on player welfare for forgetting that we're also in a high-performance industry where we have high expectations of our players and our people so that we can perform as well as possible."
