Sydney Swans coach John Longmire addressed the media ahead of training at the SCG on Monday afternoon.

Sydney beat Essendon last Friday and is now set to face North Melbourne at Blundstone Arena in Tasmania on Saturday night.

Here are some key quotes from the press conference.

Dane Rampe’s goalpost climb, umpire interaction

“Dane made a couple of mistakes during the course of the game. He’s been fantastic for us this year, he’s been sensational, he was brilliant again on the weekend and particularly in the last quarter. He’s having a ripper year and it’s just a bit of a shame that we’re talking about that today and not the fact that he’s been in such good form.”

Tight win 

“It’s always good to have close wins. It’s tough when you lose those games, but when you win a really tight one like that the feeling in the rooms after is fantastic. It was great for our younger players to experience a close game like that, and there are some things we can still learn from those last few minutes which we’ll be talking to our younger players about, but the players felt sensational after the game. Although they know this week there’s another challenge. North Melbourne had more scoring shots than the team on top of the ladder on the weekend, so we’ll get going again this week. We only had six 100-gamers and Essendon had 11, so a lot of our players haven’t had that experience of playing in a close game at AFL level. We’ll talk about it and show it on vision but the best way to do it is to actually live it – and Friday’s game gave them a pretty good taste of playing in a close game at AFL level.”

Lance Franklin’s availability for North Melbourne clash

“It’s too early to say at this point. We’ve just got to make sure we follow a really detailed plan to have him ready when he’s right to go. Whether that’s this week or next week it’s too early to know, so we’ll see how he goes tomorrow and on Thursday and make a call then. There hasn’t been a setback; it’s just that he ran last week in preparation for last week’s game but just felt a little bit tight. So he stopped, that put him back a few days and every day counts. We’re very clear that if he’s not quite right we won’t play him.”