Sydney Swans coach John Longmire addressed the media at the SCG on Monday afternoon.
Sydney is set to face the table-topping Geelong Cats at the SCG on Sunday afternoon.
Here are some key quotes from the press conference.
Sam Naismith on cusp of return
“Sam Naismith is available this week and it’ll be good to have him available for selection. He hurt his knee in March last year so it’s been a significant amount of time out for him. he’s been training now for a few weeks and he gets to be able to come back to play a competitive game of football. We haven’t spoken about whether he’ll play in the AFL or NEAFL, but he’s missed a fair bit of footy. It’s just great to have him back training, running around and giving us another option in the ruck.”
Callum Sinclair’s injury
“Callum has an operation today on his shoulder so he’s out for the season. It was taking a bit longer to get right than what we had hoped, and the timeframe was closing in regards to him being available for selection this year. It’s about a four-month timeline so he’ll be back and ready to go for the start of the pre-season.”
Lance Franklin’s fitness
“He’s still a bit sore in his hamstring so he’s definitely not playing this week and he might be unlikely for next week as well. We’ve got to make sure we get him right and have him training. He’s been able to run but he’s not involved in our training sessions yet – and that’s the most important part. We need him out there training with us to make him resilient enough to not get injured. Hopefully he’ll have a good running week this week and get back to some training next week, in which case it might be unlikely that he plays next week.”
Facing Geelong
“We come up against the best team in the competition this week and it’s a fantastic opportunity. We look forward to playing the Cats here. They’re obviously the benchmark team this year and a great measuring tool.”
Cost-of-living allowance (COLA)
“We’ve always been consistent in regards to COLA. We want to make sure there’s equalisation in regards to that. We’ve been clear and consistent with that the whole way through.”
Hayden McLean’s AFL debut
“It’s not often that you play your first game against three genuine rucks and one being Aaron Sandilands. It was a big ask of him but he really had a go. What we ask of our first gamers is for them to have a go and we thought he had a go. We had three blokes in their first year of AFL footy play on the weekend and Hayden had a real crack. I’m on the record saying we’d like to keep Aliir Aliir back and Sam Reid forward. We just want a really competitive effort in the ruck and who that comes from over the remaining rounds of the season we’ll see.”
