Sydney coach John Longmire called for more Australian Rules grounds in Sydney, after several of his players were denied valuable match practice the week before the AFL season starts.

The Swans reserves were scheduled to play ACT side Ainslie on Saturday at Blacktown, after the senior side’s pre-season match against Gold Coast at that venue.

When that was called off on Saturday morning, the Swans frantically tried to move it to their Lakeside Oval training base across from the SCG, but it wasn’t available.

“It does make it difficult. We wanted to have a full hitout today and we had a team come from Canberra,” Longmire told reporters.

“We just need more grounds in Sydney, we missed out on a practice game.

“We were going to play (at Blacktown) and then I think we were going to play back at Lakeside, but there was already a game booked there, so we looked around for grounds and we need more grounds.”

Among those players denied a run on Saturday were off season recruits Mitch Morton and Tom Walsh, both of whom would have wanted to press for a spot in Sydney’s forward line in next Saturday’s season opener against GWS.

Longmire was looking at trying to do something on Sunday to compensate for the lost game.

“We’ll definitely be training (on Sunday), it will be a tough training session, and we’re looking to maybe to do a practice game if we can,” Longmire said.