Deep dive special: Inside look at Sydney for 2020
After an off-season clean-out Sydney will enter the new season with the second youngest list. However, its most influential player is still 33-year-old Lance Franklin. Here are the young Bloods who need to step up.
Sydney
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When Lance Franklin makes his 2020 AFL entrance it will be as a man “energised” to take his young Sydney team back to the top of the mountain.
The sight of the eight-time All-Australian megastar hurling himself around the training track last November, two weeks earlier than required, was a signal of pure intent.
After managing just 29 games in the past two injury-plagued seasons, Franklin had big goals for himself, and his team this year.
Then came an unwanted blow. Those pre-season ambitions were cut down in January by knee surgery.
The Swans knew his recovery would take time, but not too much.
He was back running in mid-February, aided by that super block of work he did before Christmas, and the 2020 season won’t be very old before he makes his mark.
It can’t be because Franklin, who turned 33 after his operation, and has since become a father, still looms as the key man in Sydney having being returned to the leadership group of a young outfit which is rebuilding on the run.
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“Lance is as energised and keen to get stuck in and develop this young group as anyone,” Swans football manager Charlie Gardiner said.
“He’s been selected in the leadership group this year which is recognition for everything he does and the influence he has on the players and around the club. He’s just had a baby, which is fantastic. He’s in a really good space.
“We just have to get a really good training block into him and get him back to the fitness he was in pre-Christmas so he can make an assault on the season.”
When Franklin does run out it will be part of a new-look Swans forward line — there’s a new-look midfield too, and even some new faces in defence.
Faces will look sort of familiar, because Sydney has been turning out new players more than any club apart from Carlton in the past three years.
As lists sit, the Swans are the second youngest by average age, which is a significant departure for a club which made the finals every year for almost a decade, a campaign built on stocking up on experienced players from other clubs, such as Franklin, and filtering in young stars, such as Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills, bit by bit.
But this year, more than ever in Sydney, is about the kids.
“We were for a lot of last year the youngest or second youngest selected side on-field, but we had experience in and around the locker room,” Gardiner said.
“This year, losing Heath Grundy, Kieren Jack, Nick Smith and Jarrad McVeigh (all to retirement), that locker room experience has gone out the door so we are young across the board.
“So we certainly look different to the Swans’ lists of the last five or 10 years.
“We’ve been working towards it for a couple of years.
“So we are well into the process but we’ve had the opportunity to add some top talent through the draft. We think the talent we have assembled is exciting, we just have to bring them on as quick as we can.”
Everyone at Sydney knows the key word this year is “patience” as young players find their way.
But that doesn’t diminish expectations, it merely changes the parameters for a club where success is a standard everyone has to meet.
“We may be young and trying to develop but we have also got a strong culture of success and really high standards,” Gardiner said.
“We’ll be expecting those players in the squad to live and breathe the ‘Bloods’ culture and who knows where that can take us.
“The excitement and energy of a young squad can be infectious and we’ll just have to see how that pans out.”
THE ROSTER
INS: James Bell (promoted rookie), Kaiden Brand, Sam Gray (delisted free agents), Barry O’Connor (Category B rookie), Lewis Taylor (Brisbane Lions), Will Gould, Brady Knowles, Dylan Stephens, Elijah Taylor, Chad Warner (drafts).
OUTS: Darcy Cameron (Collingwood), Zak Jones (St Kilda), Heath Grundy, Kieren Jack, Jarrad McVeigh, Nick Smith (retired), Cody Hirst, Daniel Menzel, Toby Pink, James Rose, Durack Tucker (delisted).
The Swans were not their usual big players in trade week. They grabbed Lewis Taylor from the Lions, as a Zak Jones replacement and Sam Gray from Port as a small forward. But their main recruiting tool was the draft as the focus remained on rebuilding the list for the future.
BURNING QUESTION
1. The departures of premiership players Jarrad McVeigh, Heath Grundy and Nick Smith has left a gaping hole in the backline. How has that been addressed?
Sydney football manager Charlie Gardiner: “We started that last year with a relatively new look back six with Aliir Aliir and Dane Rampe leading it. Callum Mills has really stepped up in that general of the defence role and into the hole Jarrad McVeigh left. We think we are well down the path of addressing the defensive rebuild but it has been a focus on the pre-season, our defensive mechanisms. But we are a young list, and so we have to be a little bit patient in how they learn that. There will be a learning curve this year.”
CONTRACT SITUATION
Sydney has a strict, and near impenetrable “no comment” policy when it comes to player contracts. Midfield general and co-captain Josh Kennedy is in the final year of a five-year deal he signed in 2016 and turns 32 during the season, but wants to hang around another year. George Hewett, who completed a stellar 2019 and finished second in the Swans best-and-fairest, also looms as a priority re-signing among a developing list with most key players already locked away.
IT’S A BIG YEAR FOR
Isaac Heeney
Five years into his career the young Sydney star has sporadically shown his matchwinning capabilities. But was 26 goals in 22 games in 2019 enough from a player who ticks enough boxes to be deemed “elite”? Swans officials have made it clear that amid an exit of veterans its crucial players in the 21-25 age bracket step up, and that includes 23-year-old Heeney. For all his quality he’s never finished better than fourth in the Sydney best-and-fairest. Heeney needs a 40-goal season at least and up forward is where the Swans seem him as the greatest threat.
PRE-SEASON HERO
Callum Millstook his momentum from 2019 season where he finished fifth in the best-and-fairest into the pre-season and has been an eye-catcher on the track, as has Jordan Dawson who came from the clouds last year to play 20 games. Defender Aliir Aliir could go to another level this season.
BEST PLAYER YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF
Will Gould
Taken in the second round of last year’s draft, at pick 26, Gould has made a big impression at the Swans in his first pre-season. The 191cm, 98kg half-back played under former Sydney assistant coach Mick Stone at Glenelg in the SANFL last year, including the Tigers’ grand final win. In 15 games the 19-year-old, who has been compared to West Coast star Shannon Hurn, rated elite for intercept possessions and above average for disposals and kicking efficiency.
Originally published as Deep dive special: Inside look at Sydney for 2020