Ahead of Saturday’s preliminary final against Collingwood at the SCG, Sydney Swans coach John Longmire has spoken to the media to talk about all the important talking points ahead of Saturday’s clash.

Read the key quotes below.

How exciting is the sell out at the SCG and how much of a difference does that make to the side to have that support?

It’s fantastic. Prelim finals are what it’s about in making sure you give yourself every opportunity so to be able to do it in front of a home crowd is really exciting for us, our players, staff and critically our supporters who are able to come along here to the SCG and get behind the team.

The Swans have played one game in three weeks. What have you done to try and alleviate being slow out of the blocks considering Collingwood have been playing week in week out.

We had a tough training session in warm conditions on Saturday, and we trained last week on Thursday too so it’s good to be able to have that under our belt.

It’s always a balancing act between making sure your players don’t get injured and a really tough session so we wanted to have a good session and that’s what we did. The players had a really good blow out, pulled up well from it and that’s all you can do, prepare as best you can and we felt the weekend session was an important one for us.

Update on Ollie Florent? And going into a prelim with a healthy and stable list.

He [Florent] is fine. He did some training on Saturday and will train today.

It’s important to be able to balance between having a settled team and making the changes you still need to do to keep on improving. We feel we still have some scope to get better at and we know we need to. It goes up every week and this week will be the same.

It’s a fine balance behind having your best team in form and a settled line up. 

Lance Franklin

Lance has been training and training hard and he had a really good session on Saturday and has really set himself for that. He did that, trained well, pulled up well and will be ready to go on Saturday.

[A quiet game] It happens to the best but it was a couple of weeks ago now and he has put it behind him. He knows he will have a wonderful opponent again this week, so it doesn’t get any easier, but that’s what this time of year is about. It’s about playing against the best teams, the best players and he is a competitor and prepares himself very well so he will do that again this week.

How do you prepare the youth in the squad for Saturday?

It’s really concentrating on the play by play and looking at the things that work for us and putting your energy into our team play. When you concentrate on your processes and what you do, that usually gives you the opportunity and allows players to focus on what they can control. That’s the most important thing in any game of footy but particularly finals.

I just keep telling them to focus on what works and understanding their role in the team, that any particular moment is important and putting pressure on the opposition is important. Just concentrating on the things you can control and focus on that.

It’s fantastic to be able to play in front of a big crowd at the SCG, we understand the importance of a preliminary final, but as far as the game goes, we need to get the job done and play the footy we want to play, play by play and staying in the moment.

Can you lean on playing them and being victorious at the SCG a month ago?

You can look at that a little bit but they have a couple of different players so it will be a little bit different. It wasn’t that long ago, so you look at it a little bit and take a little bit on board but there are still some areas of that game we can get better at as well.

Collingwood’s form over the last 3-4 months has been as good as any team in the competition, they have great belief, have players in great form so it will be a big contest.

Plans for facing Collingwood.

No matter who we play, we like to play two way footy and that’s all of our midfielders.

We will have some plans that we go in with, as per every week, but at the end of the day, it’s about your collective and making sure your players work for and with each other.

There will be individual roles but every player has a role at certain points of the game.

We need to play strong, two-way footy and that’s what we will be focused on.

Did you think you would be here at the start of the season? Are you ahead of schedule potentially, on where you thought you might be at the start of the season?

No, I don’t take a step back at all. I am looking forward all the time and at the moment, what is going through my head, is this training session and then when I finish here I will be thinking about Thursday, then I will be thinking about Saturday.

We are very much about looking at what is in front of us and we have prepared for Collingwood and playing them at their very best. That is what is in our minds at the moment.  

First preliminary final at the SCG in a long time. How much of a difference does it make to play rather than away from home?

It’s a great opportunity to play here on our home deck in front of our home crowd, it is really important to be able to have our supporters come along and enjoy the moment. My experience usually tells me, that no matter where you play, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Tasmania, here, there are some fundamentals that need to get done and that will be the same on Saturday.

Click here to visit the Preliminary Final Match Day Hub for all the important game day information.

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