Last Sunday’s loss to North Melbourne was a disappointing effort from the boys and one we’ve looked closely at this week in order to turn our form around. It was a pretty ordinary performance across the board from the forwards, midfielders and defenders. It was very un-Swans like and it was something we weren’t proud of.

Our review after the North Melbourne match was a very honest one. There was no way anyone could hide from the vision, so the players were able to have a good look at what we put up and the coaches were able to as well. We then had a good discussion and sorted a few things out we hope, and hopefully we can learn from that and move forward.

This weekend we have a great chance in the space of six days to try and turn things around. We’re taking on last year’s grand finalists in the Fremantle Dockers at the SCG, so we really need to lift across the board. We need to lift our hardness at the ball and we need to get it going our way. We also need to make more tackles inside 50 and lock it in there, which is something we’ve been down on in recent weeks.

One thing we know is that you’ve got to use the ball pretty well against Fremantle because if you don’t, they hunt you down for turnovers and have a really well set up defence. We’re going to have to be on our best game - the forwards in particular, who need to give us a contest down there and lock the ball in. Freo were number one in defence last year, so it’s going to be a big challenge, but I think the boys are keen to get out there and have a bit of a crack.

This week we’ve brought Brandon Jack into the side for his first senior game for the year. He had a consistent pre-season and he’s done the bulk of the training sessions and played with us during the NAB Challenge. BJ didn’t manage to squeeze his way into the senior team for the first few rounds and has played a handful of reserves games and been pretty consistent there. We’re hoping that his inclusion really gives us some zip up forward, as well as some front-and-square power and pressure in our forward half.

While we would have liked to have named Kurt Tippett for Saturday’s clash, we’ve decided to take a precautionary approach and give him a run in the twos this week. Tippo has trained pretty well up until this point and we’re planning to run him in the reserves on Saturday so he can get some match time under his belt. We’re pretty excited about that and it will be good to see the big guy out there and we’re hoping it won’t be too long until we see him back in the seniors.