In this week's Game Plan, Swans midfield coach, Leigh Tudor, talks about the key midfield battles when the Swans face Hawthorn in Friday night's semi final...

You’re always happy when you win a final, but we were really happy with the way the boys went about it against St Kilda last week. Though we were a little bit worried in the third quarter when we lost our way a little bit, it was great to see the leaders stand up and respond the way they did.  Goodsey came out and won the first centre clearance in the last quarter and got us back on track. Our leaders have been sensational, and Goodesy, Ryan, Jude and Macca were all really instrumental in the win last week.  The form of our leaders has really helped our young players. We had five players playing in their first final last week, and they were able to feed off the example set by the leaders.

Our next challenge is Hawthorn, who we last met in round nine. They beat us easily that day in what was a really disappointing effort from us. They got us in the centre bounces and the clearances. Buddy Franklin, who there has been plenty of talk about this week, had 12 shots on goal that day, but as good as he was, it was really set up by the Hawks midfield who dominated. They were just walking out of the clearances and if they had of kicked straighter they probably would have beaten us by more.  We certainly didn’t play up to our trademarks that day. Since then our defence has improved, our attack has improved, and our work at the stoppages has improved, so that gives us confidence going into Friday night.

Much of the improvement has come since the disappointing effort against Richmond in round 21. That was a good reality check and since then the boys have really knuckled down and been diligent with their recovery and all of the little things they have to do to play well. Once you do the work on the training track, it really shows on game day.

Hawthorn will be disappointed with their result last week and we expect them to come out firing. They are a great contested ball team and will be looking to really stamp themselves in that area again on Friday night - so expect a pretty hard and tough game.

I was a bit surprised by our record at the MCG recently, but all this year, John Longmire has been very big on playing our trademark game anywhere, anytime and at any ground. In the last four weeks I think we have shown that with wins at Geelong and beating the Saints at Etihad Stadium.

This has been another good week. All the boys are up, they are excited and we know if we can bring our brand of footy to the MCG on Friday night, we can get the result to go our way.