In this week's Game Plan, Swans stoppages coach, Stuart Dew, talks about the ruck combination in last weekend's win over Geelong and how the Swans will attack GWS this Saturday night...

We were pleased with last week’s result against Geelong, but maybe not with how it ended up.

We thought we had our chances just before half time to really push ahead, but we didn’t, and Geelong being the quality side that they are were able to come back.

It was obvious what worked for us in the first quarter. When you kick straight, like we did in that first term, it applies real scoreboard pressure against the opposition. However, in the second quarter we had a lot of the ball, but kicked 1.2 and a couple out of bounds.

The good thing that came out of last week’s win was the way we finished off the match. For the guys to fall behind and then find another gear was really good and a bit different to the Essendon game in that they kept coming. Against Geelong, we were able to stop the momentum and get it going our way.

One player who is improving every week is Shane Mumford. Now in his third game back from injury, he is going really well. The combination with Mike Pyke in the ruck is also going well, and forced Geelong to sub one of their ruckman at half time in last week’s match.

Mummy had a really good start to the Geelong match and was playing at a level that we expected him to play. He was a little bit quieter in the second and third quarters, but then found something in the last quarter when the game was on the line.

We’ve also been really pleased with Pykey and his efforts in the ruck. He also managed to go forward and get a goal, which we know he was happy about. He is starting to mark the ball a lot better and his judgement is improving.

It’s business as usual heading into this weekend’s game against GWS. The build-up was probably a lot bigger the first time we met the Giants in round one, so this week it’s just been like every other game.

We’re certainly preparing as we normally would and there hasn’t been a lot spoken about the fact both teams are from Sydney or the rivalry. It’s more about the fact that we need to keep winning, and to make last week count we need to win again this week.

What we know about GWS is their intensity and their want for the contested ball is really good. Looking at their tapes we know that they started really well against Melbourne last week, and managed to kick five goals in the first quarter. It wasn’t a one off - their starts have been really good for the majority of the season, so we are really making sure our guys are focused on getting ahead at the start of the game. GWS are a team that if you give them an inch, they’ll really feed off that and get their game going.

When we played the Giants in round one, we obviously hadn’t seen a lot of their players, but now because they have rotated their players a fair bit, we have been able to find a bit of vision on most of them. We’ve been able to do our normal study now that most of the GWS guys have played a fair bit of footy. When it comes to the preparation side of things, we’ve definitely been able to get a little bit more information this time around as opposed to round one.

Across the competition there seems to be a bit of a trend of when a team has taken on a lesser team on the ladder, the result has gone the wrong way, so our guys have prepared for the Giants in the same way as we did to play the reigning premiers. Our preparations have been no different because we know how important another Swans win this weekend is to the rest of our season.