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AFL interactive ladderDane Swan believes making the finals is “absolutely awesome” after Collingwood’s 45-point win over Sydney at the Telstra Dome on Saturday night.
Swan spoke to CTV after the game and produced one of his best games this season collecting 31 possesions, 10 marks and kicked one goal.
The win has solidified the Magpies place in the finals for the third consecutive year.
“Yeah it’s obviously awesome. That was the plan going into tonight that we needed to win to make sure we were in the finals. We came out and played really well in the first quarter and put them away after quarter time and we’re in September,” Swan said to CTV.
“We still have one more game to go and if things go well we can sneak into the top four. We have to focus on Freo and make sure we beat them and for a couple of things to go our way.”
Swan highlighted the team’s recent success against the Swans after Collingwood’s sixth successive win against the club.
“They are a pretty traditional one-on-one side and back their place with the contest(ed) footy. They tried to slip a couple of people behind the ball tonight but to our forwards credit we ran it up and made sure they didn’t have a loose number in our forward line.
“They will have to go back to the drawing board again because we have shown that we have got the wood on Sydney and we obviously play pretty well against them.”
Swan was instrumental in the centre racking up seven centre clearances and four inside-50s.
“You sort of get used to it by now with someone running with you but you have just got to work hard for your teammates and get them into space. If you are getting followed pretty closely then you have to win one-on-one footy when you are getting tagged and thankfully I did that tonight and we had a good win.”
Collingwood were able to play in an open fashion relying on kicking the ball long finishing the night with a 2:1 kick to handball ratio.
“It’s just the way the game plan is. We like to kick it long. We back our forwards one-on-one and we think we have a pretty good forward setup. They're all very dangerous players and anyone of them can kick a bag in a night so we like to get it down to them as quick as possible.
“We try and look for the four points in every game we play. Freo have struggled a bit this year. They have been in a lot of games late in the last quarter and they have just been run over. Knowing that hopefully we can stay with them for three and a half quarters and hopefully we can use our fitness and strength to run over them.”
