Marty Mattner established himself as king of the one-percenters in 2011.
He was a SwansTV Play of the Day regular with his desperate spoils, chases and tackles.
Marty spoke to sydneyswans.com.au about his role in the Swans solid defensive unit.
How did you rate your season?
I felt I had a pretty good season. I thought it was one of my most consistent seasons since I’ve been at the Swans. I just tried to bring all of that defensive stuff that we pride ourselves on in the backline - spoiling, tackling chasing and all those pressure acts.
The back six seemed to be a very settled group this season?
I think there was about seven or eight of us who did the whole pre-season together as well. That’s a big advantage when you can do all that training together and get to know each other. Now that Tadhg’s left, other guys need to step up and take that spot. None of the other guys in the team are going to give it to them, so they need to step up.
What was the highpoint of the season for the team?
Probably the St Kilda win after the Richmond loss. It was probably the turning point of the season. If we had have lost that we may not have made finals. For the boys to turn it around and take the opportunity to win a tight game - a game we might have dropped in the past - that was a big turning point and it set up our last month of footy.
Who has most impressed you this season?
Sam Reid. He played centre half forward for the whole year and it is probably the hardest position on the ground to play and he did well. He took some really good contested marks and he is going to be great next year if he improves a little more and gets older, wiser and stronger.
Alex Johnson played as the third tall in defence nearly all year and had some great games. He will better with a pre-season under his belt and the match experience from this season. As I said before, the more we train together as a core group of seven or eight defenders, and the more we get to know each other, the more we will improve.
What areas can you improve in?
It’s probably just about knowing what makes me a good player and bringing that every week. Also knowing the importance of the role you play in the team. If you do your role it doesn’t matter how many touches you do or don’t get.
Where can the team improve for 2011?
It's our consistency and also our ability to hurt teams on the turnover. If we can keep winning the ball it will help, we just need to hurt teams more when we have hold of it.
You must be happy with where the team is heading?
We had a lot of guys get some senior experience this year. Guys like Sam, Alex, Luke Parker and Nathan Gordon will only get better with the match experience and another pre-season under their belt. At the moment it's really exciting times. We've got a lot of guys who have played finals footy, but the exciting thing is all the young guys coming through. This year, getting some finals exposure for those guys has been really valuable and can only improve them for next year.
Make sure you re-visit sydneyswans.com.au next week as the Swans playing list tells us more of their 2011 highlights.
