In this week's Game Plan, Swans defensive coach John Blakey talks about the win in Adelaide last weekend and approaching to the upcoming weekend off...

We produced an excellent win over in Adelaide and have earned ourselves a week off and a home Preliminary Final next week.

Looking back at last week’s final, right across the board, and not just the defence, the whole team played really well. Obviously we had a little bit of a different structure in defence without Heath Grundy, but Lewis Roberts-Thomson did a great job and controlled his match-up very well.

It is really important to have versatile players like LRT. He’s played most of his football forward this year, but we had the luxury of being able to move him back and you can see from last week’s performance that he is a quality defender. He’s able to take one of the competition’s key forwards in Kurt Tippett, who is a very good player, almost out of the game, so he is very important to our structure. HIs versatility has become a real asset.

Another player I was impressed with was Marty Mattner, who was superb in helping the other defenders as well as Nick Smith, who is ever reliable. I thought Nick Malceski did really well along with Alex Johnson, so I thought the whole lot of them played a significant role on the day.

Last week, Ted Richards was named in the All Australia extended squad, and that came as no surprise to many people. He’s had a terrific year and has built on his form from last year and has been outstanding for us. He plays on the opposition’s best player every week and has done a very good job. It’s really pleasing for Ted to see where he’s come from. He arrived at the Swans from Essendon and was a bit unsure about himself, but in the last couple of years he’s really produced career-best football.

After last week’s win, the players have earned themselves a well-deserved rest this weekend. Obviously we’ll keep the same set-up with our training structures, which are fairly important, but we don’t have the physical crash and bash of a game this week, so that’s where they get their rest. We’ll train Saturday morning to make sure we get enough work into them because no doubt the following Friday is going to come around very quickly.

We don’t have a preference about who we play because at the end of the day it’s about us to a great degree. We know our best football can compete with the best sides going around and regardless of who we play we’ll have our challenges. We’re right at the pointy end of the season so whether it’s Collingwood or it’s West Coast, that will be determined Saturday night and all we can do is prepare the best we can and hopefully bring the quality of football we were able to bring against Adelaide.

Once we know our opponent we’ll be looking ahead to next Friday night at ANZ Stadium. We hope all of Sydney comes out to support us and we’re very excited about having a home Preliminary Final because it takes away the travel factor for us and gives us that advantage. We’re really looking forward to getting out there and hopefully playing as well as we possibly can.