Sydney Swans coach John Longmire highlighted the importance of the Swans’ senior players on the AFL’s Access All Areas program this morning.
Longmire’s comments followed the impressive performance of senior team members in last weekend’s 92-point win over the Western Bulldogs, where club veteran Jude Bolton notched up a career-high 41 touches and Rhyce Shaw collected 30 possessions.
Longmire said the club’s leadership group has driven the success of the Swans this season.
“I really respect the way our senior players and our leaders go about their business week in, week out,” he said.
“Most of the time they do pretty well, 90 per cent of the time I reckon our blokes are really solid and drive the group really well, but there are lapses.
“It’s very hard to continue for the whole season and perform at that level all the time, but you really do rely on the senior group to drive on field performance.”
The coach also touched on the importance of tomorrow night’s clash against Essendon ahead of the bye the following week.
Longmire said he would like to see his team round out the first half of the season on a high.
“It’s only the halfway point of the year, but it is a big game for us,” he said.
“Essendon’s form has been outstanding this year and we’ve been a little bit up and down over the last couple of months, so it would be good to string a couple of games together.”
The Access All Areas hosts Damian Barrett and Leigh Matthews also took the time to gauge the Swans coach’s view on the suspension of Ben McGlynn.
The small forward was ruled out of tomorrow night’s clash after being suspended for a level two striking offence against Western Bulldogs player Patrick Veszpremi.
“I think the only thing I can say is that the two versions of events were quite different, but unfortunately we’re missing Benny for this week and he’s an important player for us,” Longmire said.
“I’ve spoken to Ben to make sure he knows that he can only control what he can control, so he doesn’t put himself in that situation.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, the reality is that we’re missing Ben who is an important player.”
Longmire also confirmed on the program that the club is expecting to see the return of co-captain Adam Goodes in round 13.
“We’re hoping to get him back for the Geelong game, the Friday night game after the bye,” he said.
“He’s been running really well and he’s symptom-free at the moment. We’ll up his program again next week and we’ll continue to push that along.
“We’re also very mindful that we don’t want to take too many risks with him because, stating the obvious, he’s a pretty critical player for us.
“We’ll build him up towards that Geelong game and hopefully the preparations continue to go the way they’ve gone so far, which has been good.”
Watch John Longmire on Access All Areas in the video player above
