Geelong coach Chris Scott is confident assistant Steven King will be okay, after suffering what the club has labelled a “medical episode” at training at Kardinia Park on Friday morning.
The club said King is in good hands after he was taken to the Epworth hospital in Waurn Ponds around 11am, with training suspended.
The Cats are preparing for Saturday night’s preliminary final against Brisbane at the MCG.
Scott said King will be given the time he needs, and there will be no expectation on him to be at the match.
“It would be irresponsible for us to even consider him to be around over the next 24 hours or so,” he said.
“I’m led to believe that there is a chance that he could get a clean bill of health really quickly, but out of abundance of caution it seems logical for us and the right thing to do.”
King was coming off a busy week, having flown to Perth to speak with West Coast about the vacant head coaching position at the Eagles.
“He has been working pretty hard,” Scott said.
“It is a stressful situation to be at this point of the season full stop.
“But when you add in the stress and excitement at the prospect that he could be facing over in Perth.
“I’ve only really known him well for about 12 months but he is a very resilient character.
“I’m really confident he’ll bounce back.
Scott said he wasn’t present at the time King collapsed, but was confident from what he saw and was told, that it wasn’t a life-threatening situation.
“I saw enough personally to know that he was conscious, talking and breathing normally.
“I think it’s reasonable given the feedback that I’ve got to say that this isn’t a life-threatening situation.
“The feedback that we’ve got is that we should be calm and positive about it.”
Scott admitted it’s been confronting for the team.
“It’s upsetting and it has an impact on the players.
“I don’t take the view with these things that you’ve got to pretend that something isn’t happening.
“What we’ve got to do is deal with where we are, but again the feedback is really positive.
“We’ll do our best to focus on that positive but it is quite confronting.”
Scott said the coaching staff will continue to keep the players updated on King’s health, but will be sticking to focusing as much as they can on the task at hand.
“If you had a bad injury on field, my view is you can’t ask your players to pretend it hasn’t happened.
“There will be an initial shock.
“There was some logistical issues .. we’ve sorted through them.
“It’s not our role to tell (the players) how they should think and feel.
“Our commitment to them was we will communicate the information as we get it as timely as we possibly can and give them a little bit of time to get themselves sorted.
“When the time is right we’ll make sure we do the things we had planned to get ready for the game tomorrow night.”
