Come first bounce in Sunday’s round 12 match between the Sydney Swans and Gold Coast, it will have been nearly 430 days since the two sides last faced each other.

Since a wet April afternoon when the Swans unfurled the 2012 premiership flag at the SCG and then proceeded to beat Gold Coast by 41 points, the Suns have improved considerably.

14 of the Suns’ total of 21 victories have come since that defeat at the hands of the Swans in round two 2013, including a club-record run of five straight wins which was only ended last weekend in a hard-fought struggle against Adelaide.

Swans co-captain Jarrad McVeigh told Sky Sports Radio’s Big Sports Breakfast program on Wednesday morning that it will take a significant effort to get over Gold Coast this weekend, with the two teams currently separated on the ladder only by percentage.

“They’re a legitimate finals team,” McVeigh said.

“They’re still young and still coming along, but they play the right way.

“They’re hard at the footy, they’re a really good tackling team and stoppage team, so we’re going to have to be on our game.

“They’ve certainly improved from last year and the years before and they’re right up there this year and (they) took it to Adelaide last week and have beaten some good teams all year and it’s going to be a tough game for us.”

McVeigh said curtailing the influence of Gold Coast captain and dual Brownlow medallist Gary Ablett would be important to the final result, but highlighted that this is now a multi-pronged Suns midfield to be reckoned with.

“You know (Ablett is) going to get around 30 possessions,” he said.

“But if you can limit those to the back half and force him to not be able to run through the lines and force him to kick it high or just force him to kick it straight away, you can limit those really dangerous possessions.

“But in saying that, there are other young midfielders really coming to the fore now, in (David) Swallow and (Dion) Prestia and (Jaeger) O’Meara are playing really good footy.”


After last Thursday night’s record-breaking 110-point win over Geelong at the SCG, McVeigh said the Swans would travel north full of confidence and look to extend their winning streak in Queensland to six, having last tasted defeat in the sunshine state against Brisbane at the Gabba in round three, 2009.

“(The Geelong game) was probably our best performance of the year,” McVeigh said.

“To play four quarters against a real quality team and a team we respect, and to have a big win like that was good for our confidence and hopefully it can set us up going in to the back half of the year.”

The Swans have won their last six games following a much-publicised slow start to the season, with McVeigh saying identifying and rectifying the areas that the Swans weren’t doing well was crucial to getting back to winning ways.

“The thing that we saw in the footage and what we saw out on the field was we were just soft and that hasn’t been the hallmark of the Swans team,” McVeigh said.

“We were soft at the ball and soft in our tackling and we weren’t running hard enough, so those were things that we identified, and we really tried to work on it, we trained for it, and finally now it’s coming to the fore.

“We’ve got a clear indication of what wins us games of footy and we’re sticking to that at the moment and we really want to improve on that.”