In what will be Sydney’s last trial game against an AFL side before the season proper, assistant coach John Blakey said a close to full-strength team would head north to take on last year’s Grand Finalists.
Blakey is bullish about the year ahead, and forecast another finals appearance for Sydney: “We’re certainly not here to make up the numbers and our record over the last 10 years has probably been as good as any. We expect this year to be playing finals football.”
He noted the team would also look at making some minor structural adjustments this week in preparation for the new three-interchange rule, and its floating sub.
“This gives us a real opportunity to try and get as many of our best side as we can out there and tinker with a few things before we’ve got to use the new three interchange and the substitute fair dinkum for the first time,” he said.
“We’ll have to wait and see how it works, I don’t think it will change the number of rotations too dramatically, but that’s the rule and that’s what we have to work with so there’s no good whinging about it.”
Blakey said the weekend’s ‘full dress rehearsal’ would put the club in good standing before taking on Melbourne in the season’s opening round, at the MCG on March 27.
Although unwilling to speculate on what the St Kilda side might look like come Saturday, Blakey said he would not be surprised to see a full-strength Saints outfit in action.
“I’m sure after last week against Essendon, they probably weren’t happy with some parts of their game and they’ll certainly be coming out to improve on that before they go into round one,” he said.
“It’s hard for me to predict what they will do but I imagine they’ll have a pretty good side out there.”
The Swans will be without key defender Nick Malceski, who five days ago suffered another ACL injury, while Craig Bolton (achilles) and Campbell Heath (knee) will also be on the sidelines.
Blakey praised Jude Bolton and Jarrad McVeigh for their contribution to a 72-point drubbing of the Gold Coast last weekend and said he was pleased to see some good form.
“Adam Goodes was also terrific, it was really pleasing from the point of view that we were able to get our structure set up pretty well,” he said.
“We know we were probably playing an under-manned Gold Coast side in poor conditions so we came away getting out of the game what we required.”
Despite being knocked out by Collingwood in the second round of the NAB Cup,
Blakey refuted any suggestions the Swans were not taking the NAB Challenge seriously.
“I don’t subscribe to the fact that we don’t take it seriously. Every time we go out there we play to win. We might not always have our strongest team, but we certainly go out there to play the best football that we can and to win whenever possible, that’s what we’re about.”
The assistant coach was positive overall about the performance of the team throughout the pre-season and said he was looking forward to round one of the season proper.
“We’ve played some good football over the four weeks and hopefully we can against St Kilda. Hopefully we can finish off with some good form - win or lose- and then move into round one,” he said.
