Swans rookie Dylan McNeil made giant improvements in his game in 2011.

The 20-year-old, in his second year at the Swans, was one of the Swans reserves’ best throughout the 2011 season, playing in all but one of the reserves games in a season where they reached the Eastern Conference final.

McNeil had a strong pre-season, which included shaving 45 seconds off his PB in the time trial. This set a strong foundation for the midfielder, who credits his impressive form this year to the hard work undertaken prior to the season commencing. He is now also undertaking sprint training with former national champion, Matt Shirvington.

Dylan spoke to sydneyswans.com.au about the inroads he’s made in his game this season.

How do you sum up your season?

I think I was pretty consistent. I tried to improve on a few things like my spread from the contest, and towards the end of the year it started to click so I was pretty happy with that. I improved my running from last year and towards the end of the season it started to translate more into game-style running, especially over the last eight weeks.

What was the message to you from the coaching staff?

They were on me for the whole year about my reaction time and my spread so they were pretty happy when it started to improve towards the end of the year, and particularly the last few games.

Did you play in the midfield all season in the reserves?

There were a couple of weeks where the coaches put me outside the centre square, on the wing, and I didn’t go inside the stoppages. That was to bring to the front of my mind, the need to run and spread . Then I went back as an inside midfielder, occasionally rotating up forward.

How disappointing was the end of the reserves season, when you lost the Grand Final to Ainslie?

It was disappointing. We were obviously favourites so it wasn’t a good way to finish the year after we had played so well in the reserves all year. We had been consistent and we didn’t finish off.

You’ve had two years on the rookie list, and you’ve got another one next year. What will you be looking to achieve?

Yes I’ve got another year on the rookie list so it will be a crunch one for me. If I play seniors at some stage I’ll probably get another contract, so it will come down to that I would think. So it is a big year coming up.

Where do you need to get better again to give yourself the opportunity to play senior football? 

Talking to Stuart Maxfield (player development manager), it’s just about continuing to work on my running and get that spread up to an AFL standard. I think I went a fair way to doing that towards the end of this year, so I’ll just keep working on it.

Last year you went home to Albury in the off-season and worked with a boxing coach. What are your plans this year?

Last year I had problems with my groins so I couldn’t run much and that’s why I did the boxing. I’ll do more running this year.

I’ve been working with Matt Shirvington (the former Australian 100m champion and Olympian) doing sprint training for the last three months at the Club. Matt comes here on Tuesdays and instead of doing the first training session of the week, I’ve been doing sprint training with him, and Jarred Moore has joined in too. We do it over at Lakeside. It has been great. He has changed my running technique and I’m on top of that. It helps me with the spread as I’m quicker over the first five or 10 metres but also I’m running more efficiently because of my better technique. It really helps towards the end of games. With the new substitute rule you have to be able to run all day, so the training has really helped.

What are you doing during the break?

I’ll have a couple of weeks off and then get back into it, to try and work on the running before I get back here in November. The goal is to break through in 2012.