MARK Thompson is not sure whether Mark Williams had his tongue in his cheek when he suggested that the Dream Team would try to shut Victoria down in Saturday night's Hall of Fame match.

Whether Williams did or didn't, Thompson's approach to the game is clear. "We're here to put on the best display of footy we can with the best players we can," he said yesterday. "We're going out to try to score as many goals as we can."

In any case, if either coach had different ideas, Thompson doubts he would be able to put them into practise.

"If we try and tell these guys to play a defensive, accountable sort of game they'll probably look at me and go 'phewt'. They're the most talented guys and they'll just want to play, they look forward to playing against the best, and I'm just going to encourage them to put on a show."

Just as he did when Williams attempted some mental tactics before Port lost to Geelong in last year's grand final, Thompson will not return fire, although for different reasons this time. Then, it was tactical, now, it is because he can leave the verbal sparring to one of his assistants, Kevin Sheedy.

"I'm going to leave it to Sheeds. He's doing a bit of spruiking for the game and doing it well. I'll just leave it to him and 'Choco' (Williams) to go head-to-head and concentrate on a game-plan to beat the Dream Team."

Victoria has four injury concerns, starting with captain Jonathan Brown. The team captains — Brown and Andrew McLeod — were named when the concept was launched to celebrate 150 years of Australian football.

Brown is keen to play, though his club coach Leigh Matthews has urged him, and Victoria, to be cautious. Brown said on arrival from Brisbane yesterday that he was "75 to 80% certain to play" after some light training on Tuesday.

Thompson said decisions on players would not be left until the last minute and that Brown would know if he was able to play. As coach, he wasn't concerned he had missed last week and not had a great game the week before.

"Deep down, you know if he puts the jumper on and he's captain of Victoria, he'll have a reasonable game."

Like Brown, Gary Ablett missed last weekend's Geelong-Brisbane Lions match, but the Geelong star is probably under a bigger injury cloud. Thompson said Ablett was having scans on his injured calf yesterday.

St Kilda's Nick Dal Santo and the Western Bulldogs' Brad Johnson are also in doubt, but Thompson said the story was who would play. "It's irrelevant if you write up who isn't going to play. It's who is going to play that's the highlight of this match."

Thompson said it should not be forgotten that most of this generation of AFL players had not played representative football, and were keen to.

"At Geelong, none of our boys have played for Victoria. That's the incentive.

"Steve Johnson's been at me for three or four weeks asking me 'how am I going'. I tell him, 'if you kick four for us today that'll help'."

Thompson admitted that he was not sure how to coach the Victorians. Initially, at least, he would leave the game-plan to the players.

"I know, with the guys we have at Geelong, we encourage them to coach themselves on the field and fix up little hot spots."

He was not sure that he and Williams would have that much influence on the game. The players would largely determine the shape of the game, he said.

"I hope our guys, being the best players in the competition, would be able to work that out and we don't have to have too much influence. If something's standing out, that's where the coaches come into it."