In this week's Game Plan, Swans forward coach John Blakey talks about where tomorrow's match-up against the Western Bulldogs will be won...
It looks like we are in for another wet one out there at the SCG on Saturday, something we’ve become accustomed to this season. In the wet, the game and the instructions really get stripped back to the absolute basics. There is no room for finesse, you just have to move the ball forward at all costs and support the contest.
For our forwards, all the old clichés apply. It’s about playing in front, about scrapping and just finding a way to score a goal. We need to make sure we get enough numbers around the contests. The ball is going to be bubbling around everywhere, so we need to win the majority of the contests and get the score on the board.
No matter when we play the Bulldogs, it’s always a tough game. They are one of many teams outside the eight who are really pushing hard for a finals berth. They’ve been in really good form over the last five weeks and I thought they played really well against the Kangaroos even though they got beaten.
A lot of their guys are up and going. Their midfielders didn’t have a great day last week but we know that guys like Adam Cooney, Ryan Griffen and Matthew Boyd will be eager to bounce back this Saturday.
Robert Murphy will be a bit of loss for them as he has had a great year and is such a good ball user coming out of defence. Shaun Higgins has gone into that role now and I guess they can throw Lindsay Gilbee down their too, so they still have some quality ball users setting up their attack from the back.
If you allow the Bulldogs to run and use their free players all the time they can do a lot of damage. You can’t drop your guard for one minute when you are playing them. We’ve played them many times before, and seen firsthand their ability to score really quickly and put an end to the game. We saw just this year at Manuka Oval how quickly they can score, when they came home and really challenged us in the last quarter.
Up forward, a guy we all know well will be leading the charge for the Bulldogs. Though the conditions won’t necessarily favour the tall forwards, Hally is just a great competitor and he’ll make a contest. He will bring the ball to ground, giving the guys at his feet like Luke Dahlhaus and Andrew Hooper a chance to capitalise. Barry will be keen to do well in his last game here at the SCG against his old side, so I’d expect we’ll see a typically strong performance from him this week.
One of the areas the Bulldogs have been particularly strong in over the last month is taking their opportunities inside forward 50. They lead the competition for converting forward 50 entries into goals, so that is a good challenge not only for our defence, but for the whole team, ensuring they don’t get easy entries.
As we have said right throughout the week, our biggest challenge is going out and playing four quarters of intense footy. We want to start the game like we finished last week against Fremantle and continue that for every contest over the whole game.
We’ve had an incredible week of rain, but if you can get out to the SCG on Saturday, you can expect to see a great battle between two teams desperate for the four points.
