Sydney’s perennial saviour Adam Goodes appears unlikely to rescue the reigning premiers in September, but the dual Brownlow medallist believes the AFL club has the depth to contend with the best.
Goodes on Thursday expressed optimism he would return in the finals, but the fact is the 33-year-old hasn’t played since June 13 and is still unable to run freely.
Swans coach John Longmire said last week “things need to go well pretty quickly” for Goodes to play again this season, meaning it’s unlikely he’ll be fit in time to feature in September.
Incredibly, almost half of the Swans’ 2012 premiership team won’t be taking the field against Hawthorn on Friday night at ANZ Stadium.
It doesn’t bode well for the finals, but Goodes believes the current Sydney team are just as capable of knocking off premiership favourites Hawthorn, Geelong and Fremantle.
“I definitely think so. I think we’ve shown that in the last 12 weeks,” he said.
“The players that we do have coming into the team, they just come in and play their role.”
The Swans lost games to Collingwood, Geelong and Hawthorn in the final month of their 2012 regular season, and defeat on Friday night would make for a similar form-line heading into this year’s finals series.
“Unfortunately against Geelong and Collingwood (this year) the opposition were a lot better on the day than us and we didn’t have enough contributors,” Goodes said.
“We’ve got one more game before the finals to really make sure we nail that, and really get that confidence back that we need.”
The Hawks are likely to slip to second spot on the ladder if the lose to Sydney, and coach Alastair Clarkson was wary of the threat posed by an undermanned Swans.
“You only need to look back to this time last year, when Sydney weren’t winning these types of games,” Clarkson said.
“But we know they won games when it was most important … they’re going to be a formidable opponent tomorrow night and a formidable opponent in September.”
If Hawthorn win, they will host Sydney in week one of the finals.
Clarkson didn’t plan on leaving anything up his sleeve for what would be the year’s third grand-final rematch.
“Winning form is good form and we don’t want to muck around with that,” he said.
