It was a bittersweet night for debutant Nick Blakey on Saturday night as the young forward made his AFL debut in the Swans loss to the Western Bulldogs.
With his dad in the coach’s box and family in the stands watching on the 19-year-old made the most of his opportunity collecting 10 disposals in a lovely performance up forward.
Blakey pounced on the end of some great end to end play from the Swans during the third quarter to run into the open goal and kick his first at AFL level.
“It is everything that I have ever dream of so to kick my first goal in my first game was something that is really special,” Blakey said post match.
“It is something that I will never forget that is for sure and it was just the best feeling ever.”
The 19-year-old is hoping he has done enough to keep his spot in the side as the Swans turn their attention to Friday night’s match against Adelaide at the SCG.
“It is bittersweet because tonight my dream came true but it wasn’t the result that we wanted,” he said.
“We will learn from it, we will lick our wounds and Friday night we will look to bounce back.”
“We just left it too late, we knew what we had to do and the first five minutes of the first quarter we were really up and about then just went away from everything that we said we were going to do,”
“Then we left it until the last quarter and by then it was too late.”
Blakey took his place in what was a taller forward line than what was seen in 2018 with the return of Sam Reid from injury.
Reid booted two goals for the Swans and provided a strong target up forward finishing with seven marks for the match.
Lance Franklin worked his way into the match after a limited pre-season kicking a goal during the last quarter and finishing with seven disposals and five marks.
“We knew coming in he is going to be time limited, but we decided to make that decision and put him in the team,” Coach John Longmire said after the match.
“Hopefully he can get going in regards to that training program and if he can get through that he can improve his game time.
“Once you get into game mode that is the challenge of being able to recover and train.”
