John Longmire anxious about Dan Hannebery's clash with Michael Hurley
SYDNEY Swans coach John Longmire will be as interested as anyone when the Match Review Panel hands down its findings into the Dan Hannebery-Michael Hurley collision on Monday.
The Swans will enjoy a four-day hiatus from the club as they begin their bye week, but the collision between Hannebery and Hurley will be high on the club's agenda.
The vision appeared to show Hannebery trying to win the ball, but in his haste he forcefully made high contact with Hurley, who had his head lowered as he was also trying to gain possession.
The Hannebery incident follows a week in which four players – Jarryd Roughead, Liam Jones, Mark LeCras and Paul Duffield – were rubbed out for making contact to the head.
It's also almost a fortnight since the hysteria surrounding the Jack Viney 'bumping' incident was sparked.
Longmire is unsure whether Hannebery will earn a reprieve from the MRP.
"I had a look at it and I guess the question I would ask is, what else was he supposed to do?" Longmire said after the game.
"The two options I had in my head was one, you don’t go for the ball at all; I don’t think you want to encourage that.
"The second one is that he (Hannebery) goes head-first (into the contest) as well, and you wouldn’t want to encourage that either (for fear of injury)."
"I just don’t know what the other options are."
The Hannebery collision took some of the gloss off a dominant Swans win. They thoroughly outplayed Essendon on Friday night, pressuring their opponents into critical errors and capitalising on the scoreboard.
A week after booting 15.17 against the Hawks, the Swans realigned their radar with a clinical 18.6 (114) return against the Bombers.
Their forward spacing worked a treat, with Lance Franklin running riot with five goals, while Kurt Tippett (three), Jarred McVeigh (three) and Luke Parker (two) also provided able assistance.
Longmire said Franklin was certainly benefiting from having Tippett, Sam Reid and Adam Goodes alongside him.
"It was probably our pressure that turned a lot of those opportunities into goals in that first quarter," Longmire said, referring to the Swans' seven-goal opening term.
"But in that second quarter he (Franklin) was able to win the one-on-ones and he was very good in the one-on-ones; he is hard to beat."
The Swans' next opponents, Geelong, should offer a much sterner test when the teams meet at the SCG on Thursday week.
Longmire said the players would not have long to put their feet up.
"We have a pretty strong back end to the week, train over [next] weekend – which we need to do because we're going into a Thursday game – so we'll make sure we get the overalls back on," he said.
"We'll have a couple of days off, but we've got to get them (overalls) back on and go again."
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