Magpie Swan hopes AFL career not over

Collingwood champion Dane Swan hopes he hasn’t played his last AFL game, as he awaits scans and potential surgery.

The 32-year-old 258-game midfielder is expected to be sidelined for a lengthy period after suffering fibula and foot fractures in the first few minutes of Saturday’s 80-point opening round loss to Sydney at the SCG.

He expects to undergo scans on Monday.

“If I need surgery I’ll come back and hopefully I get back,” Swan said on Sunday.

“Whether that’s six weeks or whether that’s 20 weeks or somewhere in between, I hope that’s not my last game.”

The 2011 Brownlow Medallist and five-time All Australian had just started his 14th AFL season and was non-committal about whether he would retire if he was ruled out for the remainder of the campaign.

“If I’m out for the year, or whatever it is, then I’ll think about it, but that’s a worst case scenario,” Swan said.

“I’d like to get back at some stage.”

On Saturday night, Swan was at least able to see a funny side in not recording a single stat in his brief time on the field.

“It’s the first time in my career I’ve had donuts (on the field, I eat real ones all the time),” Swan tweeted.

One of the few pluses from Saturday night’s performance was forward Alex Fasolo returning to the ground after a frightening incident when he lost control in the air and slammed into the ground head first.

“I dodged a bullet, very lucky,” Fasolo tweeted.

Collingwood’s immediate task is to regain their pre-season winning habit when they play Richmond at the MCG on Friday.

“Our pre-season has been strong and one game doesn’t sort of define us,” Magpies’ captain Scott Pendlebury told Collingwood TV.

“We’ve just got to make sure we bounce back strong on Friday night.”

One area Collingwood will zero in on before the Richmond clash is contested possessions, after finishing 31 behind Sydney in that department.

“The last two years we’ve been a really good contested footy side and that was the foundation of our game,” Pendlebury said.

“Tonight for some reason that was off and we’ve got to get that back Friday night and show all our fans and members that we are an up-and-coming side and we want to be better than we have been the last few years.”

Swan apart, Marley Williams suffered a knee knock and Nathan Brown felt hamstring tightness, while Steele Sidebottom was reported for a bump on Dan Hannebery.

Pies’ coach Nathan Buckley couldn’t find any redeeming elements in their performance but also took a long term view.

“It’s a bad performance, but we’re one week into a long season, so we need to maintain that perspective and trust the work that we’ve put in,” Buckley said.

“But what we’re seeing at the moment is all words and we haven’t backed them up with actions.”

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