Speaking to SwansTV leading into the round ten bye weekend, Longmire said the Swans’ intensity has lifted over the last month, with the midfield playing an important role in that improvement.
“When we get out pressure game going, it puts enormous heat on the opposition and it tends to lead to turnovers and scores for us, so everything starts to work a little bit better,” Longmire said.
“That’s the foundation of our game, to make sure that we try to maintain that intensity as much as we can.
“Our midfield group in particular has been a lot more consistent over the past five weeks and our depth in that area has been really pleasing as well.”
Led by Josh Kennedy, who has averaged almost 35 possessions per game over the last five weeks, and Dan Hannebery. who has averaged 32 touches per game since round five, the Swans’ senior mids have stepped up to the challenge over the last month.
Co-captains Jarrad McVeigh and Kieren Jack have also been strong contributors, with McVeigh booting three goals in the Swans’ 50-point win over Essendon and Jack collecting 32 touches in the victory.
While the regular contributors have played their role well in the last five matches, Longmire highlighted the work rate of the club’s next wave of midfielders including Ben McGlynn, Luke Parker, Craig Bird and rookie upgrade, Jake Lloyd.
The coach said the even contribution from all of the Swans’ midfielders has provided the team with more on-field flexibility.
“We’ve changed our set-up a little bit in terms of where our personnel are playing,” he said.
“We’ve tried to add some more flexibility to our team and over the pre-season we had Ben McGlynn in the midfield a lot more and he’s been able to handle that role.
“Jakey Lloyd has come in over the last four or five weeks and has played a role in our midfield as well, so it’s allowed us to change our player positioning a little bit and has added a bit more depth to our midfield group.
“We like to have nine or ten quality mids to be able to go through that area and blokes like Craig Bird have had a bit of consistency over that period of time as well.
“Our players have changed around a little bit, which is good for them and good for the team to make sure that we’ve got a really good number of players who can go through that area of the ground.”
Following a well-deserved break at the beginning of the week, the Swans now step up their preparations for next Thursday night’s clash with Geelong at the SCG.
Longmire said the team will have a solid hit-out on Sunday morning and next Tuesday in preparation for Thursday night’s Indigenous Round opener.
“We trained during the week of the bye and we’ll train again on the Sunday on the weekend and will have a really hard hit-out,” he said.
“We need to because we’re going into a Thursday game, so it’s not like a normal week where you have the bye and then have the week off.
“We need to make sure we’re working hard over the weekend because of that Thursday game, so our preparation will go to full scale, full tilt on Sunday and then we’ll train again next Tuesday prior to our game against the Cats.”
