Following the Swans’ gutsy 24-point win over Carlton on Saturday night, which saw the team reduced to just two players on the interchange bench after quarter time, coach John Longmire said this week’s lighter program would ensure the team would be in top condition come match day.
“We’re confident that we’ll freshen up,” Longmire said.
“We won’t do a lot of training this week and we didn’t do a lot last week.
“At this point of the year you’re not going to get much fitter, so it’s just having a bit of a kick and a run around and just loosening the body up.
“Then we’ll look forward to having a short, sharp hit out on Thursday over in Perth.”
The team will fly to Perth on Wednesday evening ahead of the club’s main training session on Thursday, which is a similar trip to the Swans’ round 17 preparations when they travelled west to take on the West Coast Eagles.
Longmire said the Swans enjoyed travelling as a team and were looking forward to taking on the Dockers in front of a vocal home crowd.
“We enjoy going over a bit earlier and we spend a few days there and we have our main training session there,” he said.
“We really enjoy that ‘on the road’ experience and we get over there and try and make sure we play really good, strong, combative two-way football.
“It will be a reasonably hostile environment over in Perth. We know that, and we’ve got to embrace it, and make sure we enjoy that challenge.”
The Swans will be without key forward Kurt Tippett and midfielder Tom Mitchell this weekend, who both suffered injuries in the Swans’ semi-final win over the Blues.
With an already lengthy injury list, Longmire said the Swans had shown throughout this season that they can cope with personnel changes.
“This year has been about making sure we adapt and be able to cover for players,” he said.
“We need to adapt our style of players, adapt our personnel, and to this point we’ve been able to do it okay.
“The challenge is to keep going with that but we’re confident certainly from the weekend’s game that our pressure was good, our two-way transition was really strong, so we’ve got to make sure we maintain that this week.
“You always get thrown up different challenges and we’ve had a few this year and we get another big challenge this week without two players, but that’s what’s ahead of us and that’s what we’ll cope with.”
Despite the Swans’ injury concerns, Longmire said his side was in an enviable position, adding that the players were in good spirits ahead of Saturday’s challenge against the Dockers
“We’re playing in a preliminary final this week, which is a fantastic position to be in,” he said.
“There are a lot of other teams looking on this week who aren’t participating who would love to be playing this weekend.
“We go to Perth this week and we’re playing in a preliminary final and it’s not going to be easy, we know that, but what a fantastic opportunity.
“We’d rather be playing now than not and we look forward to it.”
