In this week's Game Plan, Swans defensive coach, John Blakey, talks about the improved defensive effort against the Western Bulldogs last weekend and the key Bomber forwards that need to be kept quiet on Saturday night...

I thought last week’s win over the Western Bulldogs was a good all-over defensive performance from the team. I’m not only talking about the back six when it came to last week’s defence, our defensive work all over the ground was just really strong on the day.

Looking specifically at our back six, when the ball did reach the Bulldogs forward line, I thought our guys did match up really well and were able to hold their own in the one-on-ones and were able to restrict the Dogs’ goal-scoring ability.

One player that played an important role was Nick Smith. He did a terrific job of shutting down Bulldogs goal scorer Daniel Giansiracusa and kept him right out of the game. Heath Grundy and Teddy Richards were also really strong against the Bulldogs two key targets in Ace Cordy and Jarryd Roughead.

We were pleased to be able to improve on the performance we produced the week before against the Saints. In last week’s match with the Dogs we held dominance in the game in the first quarter after kicking nine goals. When a team produces a quarter like that it does take the pressure off and things do start to go your way. It was totally different to our match against St Kilda when we were under a lot of pressure after we dropped off in the second quarter.

Looking ahead to this weekend’s game, Essendon have a lot of talented up-and-coming forwards. They’ve got young Michael Hurley who is a great player and is capable of taking a really strong contested mark, Paddy Ryder, who is also a relief ruckman and then they’ve got Stewart Crameri who has stepped up as their dominant goal kicker of the year. They’ve definitely got some real fire power up there, including the speed and talent of Leroy Jetta, Alwin Davey and Angus Monfries, who are going to set a challenge for the back six this week.

We try and get the best match ups, and Teddy Richards is generally the one who holds the key forward each week, so I expect Teddy will line up on Crameri at some time this week. Young Alex Johnson has also done a good job this season matching up on smalls and talls for us, so at different times he will have different match ups, including Crameri.

Despite our poor performances in Melbourne so far this season, I don’t believe it’s anything to do with the ground we’re playing on. I think it’s a matter of whether or not we’re executing the brand of football that we know we’re capable of playing. When we do execute that brand of football, we give really good accounts of ourselves.

In the last two games we’ve played in Melbourne we haven’t done that, so certainly it’s a challenge for us to turn up in the right frame of mind and execute the Swans’ style of footy and hopefully that will be good enough to get over the line.

With the bye just around the corner it’s tremendously important to win this weekend. Essendon will go into the match with the same sort of mindset, particularly after a not so good performance last week.