Swans assistant coach Josh Francou sat down with sydneyswans.com.au reporter Luke McManus to discuss a whirlwind week and Saturday night's clash with Geelong.
It has been n interesting and challenging week for the club in regards to not having Adam (Goodes) around for a few days and the added attention surrounding the recent booing controversy. Just how good is it having Goodesy back?
Absolutely great. It has been a challenging week for the footy club and the playing group - more specifically Adam.
From a club’s perspective we’ve handled the situation really well, the playing group and everyone has supported Adam really well and he’s back keen to play.
We’re really excited about him putting on the guernsey again this week.
We were down in the rooms before last weekend’s game against Adelaide and there was a real energy we haven’t felt for a couple of weeks. Did you feel a lift as well?
If you looked at our previous two weeks, prior to Adelaide, the Hawthorn and West Coast games, we were really poor and both of those sides were really good.
It was obviously a good result against Crows. I sensed the energy, particularly in the warm up. There was a good vibe out there.
You’d like to say that Goodesy coming back added extra energy and motivation.
Fingers crossed we can bring that same energy and get the same result.
They obviously aim to be up for every game they play, but they seemed to have drawn a line in the sand to break those consecutive losses…
No doubt and that was the focus throughout week.
If you looked at the top four, and even fifth and sixth spot, teams are so close. It’s critical you get top four so it was a massive game for us.
Adelaide had a good win against Port Adelaide a fortnight ago and against Gold Coast the week before that.
It was always going to be a tough challenge under pressure to perform, and we did.
We’ve got a massive task against Geelong at Simons Stadium. They’re sitting eighth. Will it be at our peril to underestimate the Cats?
Absolutely. As we do every week we study the opposition really closely, if they can get there game going they’re capable of beating anyone.
We’ll have our work cut out for us. Like we do every week, we plan and prepare and hopefully we can execute.
We travel to Geelong without our number one goal-kicker, Lance Franklin, but we’ve proven in the past we can kick a winning score without Buddy…
Kurt Tippett kicked three goals last weekend and that’s after spending more time in the ruck. Benny McGlynn, hopefully he can hit the scoreboard. Toby Nankervis is another one who can give us a really strong contest.
And, last week, we had nine goals come from our midfielders so fingers crossed we can replicate that on Saturday night and get the job done.
Our record at Kardinia Park isn’t great, since 2000 we have won only three of 16 encounters. I think the answer is obvious but what makes Kardinia Park such a fortress?
If you look over the last decade, Geelong has been one of the great sides and difficult to beat anywhere.
It’s a combination of the fact they’ve been such a really good side mixed with the difficulty of beating sides on the road in front of their home crowd.
