Sydney coach John Longmire is looking forward to seeing his side implement the good habits learned throughout the pre-season in Friday night’s NAB Challenge match against Brisbane.

The Swans kick off their pre-season campaign against the Lions in Coffs Harbour with seven fresh faces named in the squad.

Longmire said the pre-season competition provided an important period for the club to be able to practice what it had been working on throughout the summer months.

“It is always about how we go about it that is always what we try and get out of this time of the year, to make sure we practice good habits,” Longmire said.

“It is good to get back into the mode of competing against genuine opposition, we have had a number of games and practice matches during training but there is nothing like playing against genuine opposition.”

“We get the opportunity this week to do that against Brisbane and we will be playing a few of our younger kids so they will get their first opportunity.”

Longmire said the extended pre-season campaign due to the Cricket World Cup had assisted his side in their preparations for the start of the home and away season.

 “We have had another couple of weeks of conditioning and match practice which is a good thing because you need every week you can get coming off that last game,” Longmire said.

“We have been able to get some extra time into the players and hopefully we can build up their match time over the next few weeks.”

Results are not a key throughout the pre-season competition but it will be important to see how the team has adapted to any changes made throughout the off-season period.

 “The real challenge now is to implement what we have been doing at training both from an individual and team sense in genuine competitive matches.”

“It is a really important thing that we are able to work through the things we want to improve over the next month to improve as much as we can before round 1.”

Longmire said his side was not underestimating the opposition this weekend following strong off-season recruitment by the Lions

“They have recruited extremely well over the pre-season you look at some of the players they have been able to recruit are established, senior, quality AFL players.”

“They have the benefit of having twelve months of experience into their younger kids and they are good high quality young kids that they have on their list.”

“They are pretty positive about their future as they should be and they will be a really good test for our blokes.”