Lance Franklin boots nine goals but Josh Kennedy suffers hamstring injury as Sydney thumps St Kilda
LANCE Franklin’s nine-goal party had a down side, with Brownlow Medal favourite Josh Kennedy suffering a hamstring injury against St Kilda.
Sydney
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LANCE Franklin’s nine-goal party to celebrate his 200th game on Saturday had a down side, with Brownlow Medal favourite Josh Kennedy suffering a leg injury just three weeks before the finals.
While the Swans regained top spot with their 71-point victory over bottom team St Kilda at the SCG and Franklin moved closer to a third Coleman Medal with his best haul for the Swans, the loss of Kennedy would be a huge blow.
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Swans coach John Longmire is hopeful that scans this week will show the injury is not serious.
“He had some hamstring tightness at the end of the first quarter and ran out there and tried to get going in the start of the second,” Longmire said.
“He was still a bit tight so we subbed him off. He didn’t feel anything go.”
Asked if he was taken out of the game as a precaution Longmire replied: “If Josh Kennedy has got a tight hamstring he’s coming off.”
The powerful midfielder has been one of the most damaging players in the AFL again this season and was the leading disposal winner in the competition going into this match.
He has been unbreakable since joining the Swans from Hawthorn, playing 126 consecutive games.
Kennedy was not missed on Saturday given St Kilda’s modest opposition and the Swans’ remaining home and away matches are against teams outside the final eight, the Western Bulldogs and Richmond.
However it will be a different story in the finals.
At about the same time Kennedy was being put in cotton wool Franklin became the AFL’s leading goalkicker this season with his fourth just one minute into the second quarter.
He overtook his great mate and former Hawthorn colleague Jarryd Roughead.
Franklin now has 61 goals, leaving him six ahead of Roughead’s 55 and it could have been more, with the dynamic left footer also kicking four points and missing completely with his last shot.
“It felt good to come out and kick the goals that I did,” Franklin said.
“I thought the team’s performance over four quarters was pretty solid and you’re obviously going to find it a lot easier when the ball was coming in like it was.
“The midfielders were on top all day and I was able to get on the end of it.
“I could have kicked a little bit straighter late but I was a bit dead in the legs.”
No other Coleman candidate was able to fire, with Roughead suspended for a week, Geelong’s Tom Hawkins failing to kick a goal against Carlton on Friday night and Port Adelaide’s Jay Schulz struggling against Gold Coast on Saturday.
There were no such struggles for Franklin as he put on a vintage display with his parents watching from the stands amid 31,361 fans.
St Kilda’s retiring veteran and former Sydney junior Lenny Hayes also had his parents at the game but it would have been a more subdued match for them.
The Swans lined up for a guard of hour to applaud Hayes from the field after the match.
Even if Hawthorn beats fourth-placed Fremantle in Perth on Sunday, the Hawks will have to win comfortably to regain top spot from the Swans on percentage.
And the Swans have also done their cross-town rivals the GWS Giants an enormous favour with such a big victory, further battering St Kilda’s poor percentage.
This makes it even less likely that the Giants can finish on the bottom and claim a third successive wooden spoon, even if they lose to fellow struggler Melbourne at the MCG on Sunday.
Franklin had three goals by quarter time and comfortably outscored the entire St Kilda team for the remainder of the game.
Melbourne, the Giants and St Kilda are locked together in the last three places on four wins apiece.
St Kilda led ever so briefly on Saturday when captain Nick Riewoldt kicked the first goal of the match but Franklin kicked the Swans’ first a short time later and it became a procession.
After a subdued second quarter, when the Swans kicked 2.5 to 1.3, Franklin exploded again in the third term.
He marked and goaled in the opening minute for his fifth and number six came from a crowd-raising snap on an angle.
Franklin’s last was a circus trick for the adoring crowd, gathering a loose ball in the forward pocket, running around one defender, shrugging off a second and then launching the ball into the grand stand from the goal square at the beginning of the last term.
Franklin received wonderful service from Luke Parker, Kieren Jack, Jarrad McVeigh and Shane Biggs, playing his first game for the season.
Originally published as Lance Franklin boots nine goals but Josh Kennedy suffers hamstring injury as Sydney thumps St Kilda
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