Sydney veteran Ryan O’Keefe says the Swans won’t be fazed by Adelaide’s home ground advantage as they attempt to secure a home preliminary final with victory on Saturday.
O’Keefe, who has played 254 games with the Swans, says the club is well accustomed to travelling interstate and playing their qualifying final at AAMI Stadium will hold no fears for his teammates.
“That’s just the system,” O’Keefe said, when asked whether it seemed unfair that fourth-placed Collingwood get to play at the MCG this week (against first-placed Hawthorn), while the third-placed Swans must travel to South Australia.
“We knew what the system is, if we won last week we’d be playing here (in Sydney),” said O’Keefe.
“It’s irrelevant I think, playing away, as an interstate side you get used to travelling anyway.
“So that doesn’t really faze us.”
While the venue may not faze Sydney, the Swans have managed just five wins from 16 clashes with Adelaide at AAMI Stadium.
The Swans’ former Adelaide half-back Marty Mattner knows it well.
“Their home ground is a really tough ground to play at and the crowd’s really vocal as well,” Mattner said.
“I know from my time at Adelaide, they used to really set themselves to play Sydney.”
Nonetheless, O’Keefe, who played in both the 2005 and 2006 grand finals, senses his side’s premiership window is jammed open.
The Swans lost to Collingwood, Hawthorn and Geelong in the past month, but had a stretch of nine consecutive wins prior to that.
And their form over the past month has been anything but awful – tight home defeats to the Magpies and Hawks could have quite easily been wins.
“We’ve had the perfect dress rehearsal for what’s coming up,” said O’Keefe.
“It’s been our best home and away season record, so it’s been pretty good. You can’t sort of argue with that,” he said, when asked if this was the best Swans team since the 2006 grand final.
“What we do from now on will maybe determine that.”
O’Keefe had a slow start to the year due to bone bruising to his knee, but has found vintage touch in the second half of the season.
“Things happen for a reason I think. It might have kept me fresh for the rest of the year – who knows.”
