John Longmire appeared in a press conference this afternoon (14 June) to answer questions from the media ahead of the Swans' clash with the Brisbane Lions on Friday night. The senior coach touched on strategy heading into the game and the mid-season draftees.
On The Hunter Bus Tragedy
“On behalf of the Sydney Swans Football Club I want to pass on our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the people that were tragically killed and injured in the Hunter Valley accident on the weekend. It’s tragic for everyone. There’s a strong AFL connect that’s becoming apparent over the last couple of days that has affected people right through football particularly in NSW and particularly community football.
“The players will be wearing arm bands and unfortunately there’s not a lot we can do or say to make it better, but everyone is in our thoughts. It’s a tragic time.”
On the team's last quarter effort
“We’ve been working on our consistency and trying to get that better. A number of times we’ve been right in the game and halfway through the last quarter… North Melbourne is an example where we finished the game off strong, another against Carlton where we played a really strong quarter. I think last week there was five free kick goals, two 50-metre penalties in that las quarter that were really costly. It’s something we’re working on. We’re not happy with it. It's basic errors in judgement at different times which is costly for us. Once the ball got into the back half, we couldn’t get it out in that last quarter.”
On dangerous tackling
“I think it’s really difficult. You’re asking a player to show a level of intent in a tackle, to get hold of a player and grabbing them, and dispossessing. At the same time you’re asking that player to be gentle and have a duty of care. It’s not surprising that [the tackle] isn’t always right. We’re asking a lot of our players and there has been a lot of talk about it. If a player does hit his head in any tackle, what we’ve said to our players is that we’re not sure what will happen. We hope there’s a good outcome for the player, that he’s not hurt, but then also a free kick or tribunal.”
On combatting Brisbane’s tall forward line
“Fortunately, Aaron Francis and Lewis Melican have come back into the team over the last couple of weeks and Rampe played his first game in a long time last week. Hopefully we start to get a few players back. We’ve still got the talent there this week to be a really competitive unit. And while [Brisbane] are tall, take great marks… we have the defenders to match that. If we can breakeven and get our noses in front with contested balls, it gets the ball in our front half.”
On Nick Blakey’s injury
“He trained today. We weren’t sure after the game how he was going to go. He got through training today and did what he had to do.”
On the Swans’ mid-season draftees
“We picked up a couple of mid-season boys – Jack and Harry – and we had our first VFL win last week. It was a really good game of footy and went right down to the last two minutes. They were great. Just to get two mature age, bigger bodies in our VFL team made a big difference and they did a good job.”
On what to improve on ahead Friday night’s game
“We’ve got to make sure we get out of the blocks better than we did last week. We mucked around with the ball last week. We didn’t get any ground position that we should have done last week. We’ve got to be strong in the midfield, Brisbane have a very good ruckman. If we go ok in stoppages and get some ground position I think we’ll be ok.”
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