Ahead of this weekend's game against Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval, Sydney Swans Assistant Coach Mark McVeigh was on SEN SA Breakfast on Tuesday morning with Mark Bickley and Jarrod Walsh, he spoke about reviewing the season so far, returning players and this week's task Port Adelaide.
On Bye week
We had four days off which was fantastic, we have been back at the club for three or four days now and have dived into a review of the first half of the season and are now thinking about the Port Adelaide game this week.
On the win over Richmond before the bye
Going into the break it’s always important that you finish with a good result and we were really pleased with what we could do at the MCG. We were under some pressure around performance and we thought we played quite well. There were certainly aspects of our game we got going and we were really pleased with some of that.
Review of the season so far
You dive right into the game and assess what needs to be done. It obviously wasn’t our strongest first half of the season and we really addressed some of the issues that needed to be attended to in our game. Whether that be our ball movement, team defence etc we were able to put a lot of time into that and dive into the numbers and go into it with the players. This gave us a great opportunity to reflect with our players and see what does the second half of he season look like and where are we going to narrow our focus.
On injuries and the potential return of key players Errol Gulden and Tom Papley over coming weeks
There’s a lot of teams around the competition dealing with it (injuries). Whether it’s injuries to key personnel ahead of behind the footy. I think for us, it’s had some significant impact in areas, that said we have also been able to blood some players who have needed to get in a game. So yes it has hurt us a little with some connection and some key components of our game have not been at our best but that doesn’t mean when they come back that it’s going to go away. Even with some personnel down we weren’t executing in the right manner and we thought we could have done a lot better.
When they (players) come back, fantastic, it gives the other players a lift, they walk a little bit taller but I don’t think it will change things straight away. Our training standards, our ability to train harder, we have addressed that over the break. It won’t happen straight away but (their inclusion) certainly gives players a lift.
On this week's opponent Port Adelaide
We have a lot of respect for Port Adelaide, we understand that when they are at their best they are hard to beat. We understand going over there and playing them is a really difficult assignment and watching back on the weekend, their ability to move the ball and connection was outstanding. We are under no illusion of what it’s going to look like this week and how well we will have to play to beat them.
