David King predicts ‘brutal’ derby final between Swans and Giants
SYDNEY and GWS ended the regular season battle-affected but the week off before finals gives both teams a chance to restock ahead of what is expected to be an old-fashioned rumble at the SCG.
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SYDNEY’S second derby final in three years is predicted to break out into all-out “warfare” next week, with AFL great David King declaring the showdown will be the most brutal contest of the finals.
King says the Swans are renowned for dragging teams into “the trenches”, but believes the pre-finals bye round gives the Giants a chance to restock and arrive at the SCG on Saturday week ready and able to fight fire with fire.
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Swans coach John Longmire did little to play down the potential viciousness of the encounter as he praised his players for rediscovering the hard-nosed style of play that had deserted them when they slumped to back-to-back losses against Gold Coast and Melbourne a month ago.
The AFL’s controversial bye-week system on the eve of the finals has been accused of robbing top teams of their momentum.
However, it proved a major factor in helping propel the Western Bulldogs to the flag from outside the eight back in 2016, coincidentally the last time the Swans and Giants played off in a final.
Leading Fox Footy analyst and former North Melbourne star, King has no doubt that in 2018, if the week-off plays into anyone’s hands, it will be to the benefit of the Swans and Giants who have got to the end of the regular season battle-affected.
Lance Franklin will return for Sydney and Toby Greene for the Giants and King said the Sydney side that can get through an old-fashioned rumble at the SCG will be set-up for a major assault on the premiership.
“I think this will be the most brutal game of the lot. Sydney want to drag you into the trenches. GWS probably didn’t handle that as well as they’d like on Sunday against Melbourne, but this will certainly be the toughest in terms of head-to-head warfare,” King said.
“I wasn’t a fan of the week off when it first came in but when you see the effect it can have on a team that just needs to come up for oxygen and get themselves a couple of players back … I think it’s a massive difference.
“Some of those guys who didn’t play on the weekend but would have been very close had it been a final, now they’ve got another two weeks effectively, so that’s a big part of the program now to factor that in.
“I think it’s been a Godsend really. I like teams at their best in a finals series.”
When the Swans dropped out of the top eight last month, Longmire challenged his team to return to playing tough, uncompromising football.
Despite going down in the final minutes to Hawthorn on the weekend and missing a top four spot, Longmire said the edge is back at the bloods.
“We’ve played four teams that are playing finals in the last month and we’ve been in the hunt in all those games. We won three and lost one with eight minutes to go,” Longmire said.
“We feel we have played some good football, we’ve put some pressure on. If you look at our tackle numbers I think we’re no.1 in the competition.
“We’re back to that real hard pressure game of football we like to play. It went missing for a while and we’ll work hard this week to make sure that bye doesn’t mean it goes missing again.”
Longmire said both the Swans and GWS would be taking inspiration from the Bulldogs’ famous breakthrough premiership from outside the eight two years ago.
“It’s something all the teams outside the top four will think about because you have to do it that way,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You have to do a lot right. It gives us a degree of confidence but we know we have to do a lot right between now and then.”
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