AFL 2025 LIVE updates: Carlton Blues and Geelong Cats battle it out at the MCG

Carlton will be bolstered with the return of Harry McKay while a sore Jacob Weitering is also set to play in the crunch clash against Geelong.

The Blues will celebrate the 30-year anniversary of their most recent premiership against the Cats – who were defeated in the 1995 season decider – at the MCG on Sunday.

And their chances of doing so with a win have received a boost when key forward McKay was cleared to play his third game of the season.

McKay missed three games due to personal reasons and was concussed in his comeback match in the round-five win over West Coast.

But the 2021 Coleman medal winner will rekindle his partnership with Charlie Curnow when the Blues (2-4) seek to continue their resurgence with a third win on the bounce.

“For our forward mix, just having a little bit of continuity and cohesion up there will help,” coach Michael Voss told reporters on Friday.

“Those magnets have moved a fair bit in the first five or six weeks of the year.

“(It’s pleasing) to be able to have Harry and Charlie there leading up the front, and we had a few smalls that had an impact in the game last week as well.

“It’s a collective response that they’ve gone after, the forwards, and we’d love to be able to settle them down up there so they can settle into their roles and settle into the performance.”

Weitering hobbled off the field late in the round-six win over North Melbourne following a knock to a knee.

The star defender has been limited at training in recent days but has been named in the team to take on Geelong as a battle with Jeremy Cameron looms.

“We expect him to be ready to go,” Voss said.

“He’s got a great (pain) tolerance.

“When you have to get through a full season, there are times where you aren’t feeling 100 per cent, but at the same time they’re out there to perform.

“He’ll be fit and ready to go, and he’s going to have a pretty big challenge on his hands.”

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Chris Scott has had a double-barrelled crack at the AFL for fining players such as colourful Cats star Bailey Smith thousands of dollars for “stuff that just doesn’t matter”.

The outspoken Cats coach also criticised the league’s decision makers for dealing out “bewildering” financial sanctions for actions that they later used to promote the game.

Speaking at his weekly press conference, in the lead-up to Sunday’s match against Carlton at the MCG, Scott said the AFL had “far more serious things” in the game to address than players “flipping the bird”.

“I would query how consistent the AFL are with these things. On one hand, they seem to love it and promote things like Gather Round, and [the rivalry between] Port and Hawthorn,” he said.

“Then, on the other hand, they seem to feel like they need to fine people for stuff they are promoting. I’d pick a side if I were them.”

The AFL slapped Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley with a $20,000 penalty after last year’s qualifying final for sledging Hawks forward Jack Ginnivan. They then scheduled the two teams to meet again in Gather Round this year.

Geelong’s high-profile recruit Smith was fined a total of $3750 for two incidents during the Easter Monday win over Hawthorn – pushing a ball in opponent Jarman Impey’s face, and later giving the finger to the crowd.

The former Bulldogs star was hit with another $1000 sanction a week earlier for making an obscene gesture to the crowd after Geelong’s round five victory over Adelaide.

“I think it’s very, very minor. The fact that it is a fine is bewildering to me,” Scott said of Smith’s Impey interaction.

“The same with obscene gestures. Maybe they’re a bit prudish at the AFL.”

While Scott said there was a behavioural framework that all players, including Smith, had to work within, he dismissed a suggestion they had to curtail their emotions to set a good example for junior footballers.

“You are going to go with the VAFA argument, which is, ‘We can’t have this sort of behaviour because it trickles down to the lower levels’?” Scott said to a reporter.

“I am not sure that that is our responsibility. I think we are elite. By world standards, this is as high as it gets.

“For them [the AFL] to be overlaying their obligation, that they have chosen to take to grassroots footy, onto us – absolutely when it comes to violence in the game and playing within the rules – [but] I think this stuff, it just doesn’t matter.

“In the modern world, if flipping the bird is just so horribly obscene and a shock to people’s senses, then I don’t know. That’s not the world I am living in.

“You get a lot more obscene stuff watching music videos on YouTube, I would suggest.”