Swans coach John Longmire said both Sydney and GWS have a lot to look forward to when it comes to talented young players.

Speaking ahead of the Carbine Club AFL Lunch alongside GWS coach Kevin Sheedy, Longmire said the future is looking bright for AFL in the Harbour City.

“I think the whole football world over the course of the year has been able to see how competitive the Giants have been, and rather than petering out, they’ve actually reinforced the fact that the style of football they play is actually a really competitive style of footy,” Longmire said.

“They’ve got talent, but they’ve also got a real competitiveness, and our players know and have talked about the fact that they are going to get a real contest tomorrow.

“They’ve got blokes like Toby Greene and Jeremy Cameron, and those fellas just have a real crack at it, and there are a number of them who compete really hard, and that’s what we’ve seen over the course of the year.”

But the Swans coach was quick to remind Sheedy that it isn’t just GWS that has exciting young talent developing within their ranks.

“I think we’ve got a few good, young kids too and if you look at Sam Reid, Lewis Jetta and Daniel Hannebery then I think we’ve got a good, strong group of core youngsters coming through who can really look forward to playing against some of the blokes that they’ll play tomorrow over the next decade,” Longmire said.

“That’s the exciting thing probably from both clubs’ point of view is that there is some really good strong young talent coming through both teams, which means they will be able to play on each other for a long period of time and create their own rivalry not just in a team sense, but in a one-on-one sense.”

Sheedy, who admitted to resting big name players ahead of this weekend’s Derby, said there was no doubt the Swans were a force to be reckoned with this season.

“I’ll be honest, we rested Chad Cornes last week and we put Lukey Power as a sub to make sure they didn’t play a hell of a lot of game time because they are very good players for us, they are very experienced players,” he said.

“Hopefully we’ll be better (than round one), but obviously the Swans are flying the flag for a top four spot and that’s a pretty decent target for them, and they are on target.

“I’ve watched their last few games and they jump out of the box really quick and then the other teams are trying to catch them.”

The Swans will be aiming for their tenth season win in tomorrow night’s Sydney Derby and will be hoping to string together their fourth consecutive win in as many rounds.

Longmire said it was important for his team to build on the impressive form shown in the Swans’ last two wins against Essendon and Geelong in tomorrow night’s match.

“In the last couple of games we’ve played Essendon and Geelong, who are really strong teams, and we thought we’ve given a pretty good account of ourselves for most of those games,” he said.

“We’re going to try and continue that momentum going into tomorrow’s game and it’s really important for us that we keep our players up and playing well and continue to play a strong game style and that’s what we’ll be trying to do tomorrow.”