Geelong coach Mark Thompson has refused to guarantee James Podsiadly will return for Friday night's semi final against Fremantle even though the forward has completed his suspension.
The mature-age rookie promotion was outed for two games for making high contact on Carlton's Bryce Gibbs in Round 21, meaning he missed the win over West Coast the following week and last Friday's heart-breaking four-point, qualifying final loss to St Kilda.
For Podsiadly to return Thompson will have to leave out one of Tom Hawkins or Mark Blake, with most people of the view that it will be ruckman Blake that would make way with Hawkins splitting his time between the forward line and back-up ruck duties behind Brad Ottens.
But Thompson said on Monday morning at Skilled Stadium that he may yet go back on a promise to Podsiadly that he would be an automatic inclusion against the Dockers at the MCG with defender Tom Lonergan to also be in contention after being a late withdrawal against the Saints.
"I sort of guaranteed Podsy (Podsiadly) a spot last week, but he's no certainty," Thompson said.
"He's just a good chance to play."
"We'll back our boys in but obviously, with Podsiadly, he's (Lonergan) had a fantastic year and at times he's been one of our better defenders."
"We probably could've used, in retrospect, Lonergan last week as a bit of a fill in against (Nick) Riewoldt and Kosi (Justin Koschitzke)."
Thompson is no closer to establishing why the Cats didn't get going until well after half-time, finding themselves down by more than five goals before they rattled home and went down by four points against St Kilda.
"We can't get to a big game, a final and have so many of our players play like they did in the first half on Friday night," he added.
"That's just a given really."
"Trying to work it out, I've analysed, I've watched it a few times, spoken to a lot of the players, they can't work it out either."
"I'm not sure whether they took it easy or there was too much anxiety."
"All I know is that you can't jump inside their heads and we can't actually do anything for them."
"It's up to them to get the best out of themselves and the Geelong Footy Club really requires them to have a fantastic start on the weekend."
Having also reiterated the view he provided on Friday night that continuing to play throughout the finals may not be such a bad thing, Thompson was also impressed by the Dockers' win over the Hawks.
"We know it's a knockout final, we cannot take Fremantle easy at all and we have to totally respect them," Thompson said.
"But the continuity of playing is in my eyes is not such a bad thing."
"I thought they were fantastic on the weekend against Hawthorn, I thought they really enjoyed the opportunity to play finals."
"They've got some outstanding young players and some good depth with their older players so they had a good game and they're going to hard to play against."