Dan Hannebery and Jarrad McVeigh make last-ditch bid to prove fitness for Round 1
DAN Hannebery and Jarrad McVeigh are making a last-ditch bid to prove their fitness for Sunday’s season opener against West Coast at the newly built Perth Stadium.
Sydney
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DAN Hannebery and Jarrad McVeigh are making a last-ditch bid to prove their fitness for Sunday’s season opener against West Coast at the newly built Perth Stadium.
The pair have made dramatic progress over the last fortnight after looking highly likely to miss the trip west with calf injuries.
Hannebery hasn’t played in any of the Swans’ pre-season or JLT Series matches while McVeigh has played some competitive footy.
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“Macca had a really good pre-season including some match play,” Swans coach John Longmire said.
“He’s done a fair bit of work. He missed just under four weeks and has been back training for a couple of weeks. He is not out of this week and Hanners has had a really good 10 days of training with the team.
“He’s been reaching intense levels and his GPS numbers at the weekend were of a really high standard.”
Both Hannebery and McVeigh will train at the SCG on Tuesday and will need to complete all of the session along with Thursday’s hit out before the Swans fly to Perth on Friday.
“We will look at how they train,” Longmire said.
“There are two sessions to go and make a call from there.”
If Longmire errs on the side of caution and picks just one of the pair McVeigh looks the most likely.
His experience and leadership will be valuable as the Swans face the toughest start to the season of any team in the competition.
After facing finalists West Coast and Port Adelaide in the opening two rounds they will meet three of last year’s top four, GWS (Round 3), Adelaide (Round 5) and Geelong (Round 6) in the following weeks.
The season opener against the Eagles will be especially challenging with the home team keen to chalk up a win at their first game at their sensational new venue.
Heath Grundy is another senior player who has done enough to be included in the team to play the Eagles after battling a calf injury.
“Grundy is fine,” Longmire said.
“He’s played over a hundred minutes on Saturday.”
The Swans coach says he’s preparing for Nic Naitanui to be given the all clear after missing the entire 2017 season.
“We’ll plan for both scenarios,” Longmire said.
“It’s hard enough to pick our team, I’ll let Simmo (Adam Simpson) pick his.”