EVERY year at about this time, a flood of stories appears with AFL players declaring their teams are having their best pre-season in recent memory.
It’s something of a cliché, but in the case of the Sydney Swans, it might just be true.
A fit list, a plethora of new faces and a large dose of renewed enthusiasm has led Ryan O’Keefe to declare the summer of '09/10 the toughest he could recall.
Speaking before the majority of the Swans’ list tackled the imposing sand dunes at Wanda Beach on Friday, O’Keefe said the heavy workload would allow his side to produce its best football from round one.
“We’ve got a really healthy list and we’ve got as good depth as we’ve had for several years,” he said.
“There are obviously a lot of new players trying to get that synergy together but it’s going to be interesting. We’re going to have a real crack at it from the beginning.”
After missing the finals in 2009, the Swans had their earliest start to pre-season training for seven years but O’Keefe said that wasn’t the only reason for his optimism.
“The last couple of years, we’ve had a reasonable injury list as well and that could be a factor that meant we didn’t have as hard a pre-season and we didn’t have that good [fitness] base,” he said.
“Hopefully this sets everyone up and we’ll have less injuries this year, a lot of fit players to pick from and a lot of competition for spots, because that’s what we want.
“We want everyone fighting for their position so it keeps everyone on their toes.”
O’Keefe highlighted Nick Smith, Jarrad McVeigh and Craig Bird as early standouts in 2010. Ed Barlow, who was absent from Friday’s dunes session, has been another impressive performer.
And with old stagers such as Michael O’Loughlin, Leo Barry, Jared Crouch and Barry Hall no longer around, O’Keefe said the injection of new faces had refreshed the playing group.
“Any professional sport is in the mind and if you get a bit dull and unmotivated in anything, it’s going to be hard to perform well and push yourself,” he said.
“With the new guys coming in, they’ve got the enthusiasm and they want to prove themselves, but we don’t want to let our positions go either and it just pushes us along.
“It gets the whole team going in the right direction, so it’s been really good.”
With coach Paul Roos enjoying a break in the US, coaching co-ordinator John Longmire has overseen the Swans’ training sessions since the Christmas break.
O’Keefe said while it hadn’t been formally discussed, the fact that it was Roos’ final season at the helm was never far from the players’ thoughts.
“We want to make sure we have a good year for Paul with what he’s done for the club. For a lot of us older guys, he’s made our careers so we really want to let him go on a good note,” he said.
