Sydney Swans midfielder Luke Parker is hoping Saturday night’s loss to Hawthorn can become a turning point in his side’s season.
The Swans suffered their fourth loss of the season by 89 points against the Hawks in front of 37,369 fans at ANZ Stadium.
Parker said his side had to use the loss as motivation heading into the back end of the home and away season.
"That's the issue for us – we can't afford to be even a little bit off against them because then you're relying on luck just to stay in the game.”
“Hopefully that's one of those losses which can be a bit of a turning point for our season and provide us with the right mindset going into the final third of the year.
"When we bring our best, we can beat anyone, it doesn't matter where we are. There's not actually that much of a gap, but even when there's a small gap, the top teams will punish you for it.”
The Swans drew level on majority of the statistics across the match but were not able to make the most of the opportunities that were presented to them.
"Our ball movement is something we'll really look to fix. We'll need to improve on it because if we turn the ball over like we did on Saturday night going forward, it will keep on costing us," Parker said.
"It's definitely possible. When we're at our best, I think we're capable of challenging anyone and we showed that earlier on in the year.”
"That was probably our worst performance of the year. It was an embarrassing loss for us and that's not how we saw that game going.”
Parker said an improvement had to come in basic skill execution to turn around the disappointing performance.
"The funny thing is that in our key stats, it showed we won a lot of them but just our ball use at times was very ordinary," Parker said.
“In the end it cost us because when we turned the ball over, they worked it all the way down the field for easy scores.
"We know they are a kicking team and at times they were able to dispose of the ball too easily and were able to hit those little short releasing kicks all over the field without too much pressure on them. That's something we need to get right.”
