Ahead of tonight’s Preliminary Final clash against Collingwood at ANZ Stadium, Swans stoppages coach Stuart Dew took a closer look at some of the Pies key contributors this season and which Swans players are likely to get the job in shutting them down.

Forward: Travis Cloke

It will be either Ted Richards or Heath Grundy who will take on Cloke this week as they’ve been the main two defenders all year. Grundy comes back into the side after a week’s holiday so we expect one of those two players to take Cloke for the majority of the night.

Cloke’s body work is certainly his strength. He is one of the strongest in the league in a marking contest, so depending on how the ball comes in, his influence on the game will be a big factor.

People have been saying Cloke is out of form, but I think statistically he’s had a better year than last year, so it’s probably just the heightened scrutiny on him this year. There should be no doubt that he’s a real key to Collingwood’s scoring power this season.

Heath Grundy had a reasonably good game on him in round 20, but it’s funny with good players, it only takes them a quarter to turn their form around. Cloke is certainly in a lot better form now, and he kicked six a couple of weeks ago against Hawthorn, so he’s a different player to what he was in round 20 and he’s certainly put a few good games together and is a proven big game player.

Midfield: Dayne Beams

We’re still working through match-ups in the midfield and we’ve got a few options for Dayne Beams. Kieren Jack has played on him before and so has Jarrad McVeigh and we’ve even got Craig Bird there as a bit of an option if we need to shut him out of the game.

What we’ve seen with Beams is in both winning games and losing games, his possession count doesn’t differ too much, which has been indicative of the season he has. Last week he apparently got tagged but still racked up 30 touches, so he is certainly an elite player.

The challenge coming up against teams like Collingwood is that they go really deep through the midfield, so our challenge this week is to try and quell their influence. But win or lose, it seems their midfield output is pretty much the same, which is what you expect from gun players. We’ll do our best to try and match them in that area and limit their input.

We had more inside-50s last time we met, so looking back on that game, we didn’t use the ball as well as we would have liked to give us better opportunities inside 50.

I think we wasted a fair few opportunities, and as you know against good sides, Collingwood took theirs and made us pay and they got the result.

Ruck: Darren Jolly

Jolly is probably the best ruckman in the league at the moment. He is in form, he’s so strong and last week he was up against both Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui and was able to beat them. He plays pretty much all the game by himself, and there are only one or two centre bounces that he doesn’t get to.

He gives them first use and probably got the better of our rucks the last time we played, so we’re looking forward to Mummy and Pykey trying to put in a better performance this week.

Defence: Ben Reid

There is a chance of Reid versus Reid this week, but it probably is more dictated by Collingwood’s structures because we know Sam will be playing forward for us.

We expect at times, because the Collingwood defence is so flexible, that Ben will spend some time on Sam and he’s played on him before, but it’s rare that the Collingwood defenders have one opponent all day.