Swans stoppage coach, Mark Stone, relates how disciplined the midfielders were against West Coast, and how they will need to repeat that effort against the Cats …

YOU often go into games knowing that there is an aspect of the opposition’s game that is going to be tough to counter.

That was the case last Saturday against West Coast. They have two quality ruckman in Dean Cox and young Nic Naitanui and we expected them to be fairly dominant in the ruck contests last Saturday. It is difficult for even the best ruckmen in the competition to negate two big men of that ilk, so we planned that they would get their hands on the ball first in the ruck more often than we did.

With that in mind, we had specific roles for our guys so they could cover certain areas and limit the ability of Cox and Naitanui to get the ball out over the back of the ruck contest and into space. If we allowed them to hit it into space, then their midfielders would have been able to run onto the ball at pace and damage us going into attack.

The Swans guys that played those specific roles did them very well, and that allowed us to win the clearances, even though the Eagles won the hitouts. Our midfielders were very disciplined and worked together to cover those dangerous spaces.

That enabled us not only to defend those attacking moves from West Coast but also counter-attack them at times, to get our hands on the ball first and go back our way.

Last week our midfield worked together as well as I’ve seen them and it gave them a lot of confidence and trust in each other.

Planning for the opposition is an important task for the coaching staff every week. I spend most of Tuesday and Wednesday each week studying the opposition and preparing for team meetings on Thursdays. You are looking in real detail at not only how the other team operates, but how you can operate against them without changing your own game too much.

Even though our ruckman Shane Mumford didn’t win the majority of the hitouts, we were still pleased with him and his ability to keep going all day.

He is such a great competitor, he never ever gives in to an opponent, to a team, or to himself. He never gives in to his own body telling him to slow down. He gave away a free kick to Cox late in the game and Cox kicked a goal. Mummy came off the ground for a spell and he was annoyed, but then he went back on and took some real telling marks at crucial stages in the last few minutes. That is a real credit to his character.

Shane and the rest of the team have another huge challenge on Saturday night against Geelong, here at home at the SCG. Geelong aren’t much different to what they were last year and the year before when they won the premiership.

Sure they’ve lost Gary Ablett but they still have about 14 or 15 premiership players and they’re playing well.

Their ruckman Brad Ottens is back and looks fit and strong and Jim Bartel is playing well, as is James Kelly, and Joel Selwood is just an outstanding midfielder. They are such a highly skilled side that if you give them room to kick the ball they will hurt you.

They can put so many players through their midfield. They share the load so they're not like some teams who have one outstanding midfielder. Geelong have eight or nine who go through the middle so we have to be good across the board.

We can’t rely on one or two players to get the job done.

We haven’t played them on the SCG for six years, and I’d like to think it gives us a little bit of an advantage, particularly when they play a lot of their games at Skilled Stadium which is such a long ground.

Coming to a ground which is as short as the SCG does change things a bit but no doubt they’ll be aware of that and will still try to play through the corridor. In some respects it gives them a shorter avenue to goal but it will be slightly different for them.

It is just great to be here at the SCG, with Geelong second on the ladder and us third, and a big crowd, big contingency of red and white in the stands. We want to make it a bit of a fortress, or at least an uncomfortable stadium for opposition teams to play in.

They haven’t lost at Skilled Stadium for 24 games and we’d like to build that sort of record here!