Sydney Swans coach John Longmire addressed the media at the SCG on Monday afternoon.
Sydney is set to face Hawthorn at the SCG on Friday night.
Injury wrap
“We’re looking to get a few players back this week, which would be fantastic. Probably the one out of that group that we’re not looking at is Harry Cunningham, who had a slight setback with his groin on Saturday. But Josh Kennedy, Zak Jones, Will Hayward and Kieren Jack – we’ll wait to see how they go at training this week and so far they are progressing well. Jarrad McVeigh will miss a couple of weeks. He got a slight strain in the West Coast game. It wasn’t a bad one but enough to set him back a couple of weeks.”
Facing Hawthorn
“We’ve had some great clashes with them over the years. We play them again this week, we know it’s always a fierce contest and that’s what we’re looking forward to. It’ll be fantastic for our young team to play such a fierce opponent in Friday night footy. We’re really confident in our young group, we think we’ve got some really good young players and part of the journey is playing against the best teams. Over the last three weeks we’ve played three of the best teams in Collingwood, Geelong and West Coast, and we get to face a team this week that we’ve had a great rivalry with."
Nick Smith injury news
“Unfortunately, Nick has to have another surgery this week on his hamstring, and that’s really disappointing for him. He was looking forward to getting back in the second half of the year and contributing, but that’s not going to happen now. His season is done. As far as his future is concerned, we’ll sit down with Nick at some stage and work out what that looks like. At the moment he’s just got to have his operation and we’ll look at his future after that.”
Callum Sinclair’s 100th AFL match
“He’s had to make his way into AFL football through a different route. He was at Port Melbourne, he was put on West Coast’s rookie list and now he’s here in Sydney and has been playing a really important role for us for a few years now. We’ve had injuries to Sam Naismith and the like through our ruck stocks, so he’s been really important in recent times. It’s a great achievement for him. His 100-game milestone wasn’t against West Coast last week, but I’m sure he’ll enjoy the occasion.”
