Preview Swans v Waalitj Marawar Saturday 3.05 pm @ Henson Park

[Callipygian]

Well, we play our final match of the season this weekend at Henson. The weather is slightly iffy but should be alright according to my weather app - possible showers in the morning but fining up in the arvo. Good conditions for footy.

We will be playing Waalitj Marawar aka West Coast who have had a good first season under Daisy Pearce as coach. They have registered 4 wins to our 2 wins. Nevertheless, they will have to travel and we will have a fighting chance of prevailing. We will be wearing our Indigenous guernsey for the second week in a row, first time for a home game.

Personally, between the mass of injuries and consequent form slump, plus not having recovered from 28 September, I have not been a good supporter this season and I have not been following as closely as I expected I would or as I did last season. Nevertheless I am planning to go and cheer on our women on Saturday.

There will be at least 2 changes to the team that took on the Lions on the weekend: Maddy Collier has been suspended for rough conduct; and Giselle Davies sustained an ankle injury that will keep her out. On the other hand, Ruby Sergeant-Wilson has recovered from illness and will be available for selection. Bullas, Cooper and Szigeti are others that might be recalled to the team. I can see Bullas being called in to fill the hole left by Collier but there are plenty of other possibilities. McEvoy could be shifted back and Szigeti plugged into the midfield, for instance.

For some players this will be their last game as Swans and even as AFLW players. The post-season list review and downsizing is yet to come but it is inevitable that a number of players will depart the club and some of them will surely be playing this weekend. So it's a great opportunity to cheer and thank them for their contributions.

Regardless of whether we win this week we can finish the season no higher than 15th. If we lose there's a possibility that GWS could leapfrog us. (Theoretically, so could the Suns and Collingwood - but there seems no real risk of that happening.)

Putting a positive spin on this, we have every reason to pursue the win and no risk of slipping an important position at the pointy end of the draft.

And here's the club's take on why you should go to the match: https://www.sydneyswans.com.au/news/1685752/10-reasons-to-attend-round-10-this-saturday.

Cheer! Cheer!

 

[SwansProudly]

...

On the young side finding confidence
“There's been some real strength in the performances. We don't focus on the score itself in review. We basically take the lessons from what the opposition threw at us. I think we've got a lot of growth this year. It's been positive from a perspective that you learn different things of what sides do to you, how they stop your momentum and what they do when they get momentum.”

...

On how the group is feeling after the condensed fixture
“It was more just the lack of access to them from a training perspective, because we couldn't train and you're basically playing three games. Particularly in our situation, we're in a learning phase that we didn't get time to review properly and then go out and train it, so we found that we were making the same mistakes for three games in a row.

"That fourth game, when you come out of the condensed fixture, there's a little bit of fatigue there, so you're sort of sitting in that world of not training even post-condensed fixture, which makes it hard. I think it really hampered us from a learning perspective… probably more the lesson than the fatigue side of it.”

Key Quotes: Scott Gowans, Round 10

See what the AFLW senior coach had to say on Laura Gardiner, the condensed fixture and the last game of the season.

www.sydneyswans.com.au