We're confident, says Swan
Star Collingwood midfielder says his side is ready to fire in the finals after a lacklustre finish to the home-and-away season
COLLINGWOOD star Dane Swan is confident his side will be able to recapture its best form when the Magpies take on the Western Bulldogs on Saturday night.
Having already wrapped up top spot, the Magpies looked out of sorts in the last two rounds of the home-and-away season when they were pushed by Adelaide and lost to Hawthorn, but Swan is unconcerned about their lead-in to September.
“We’re very confident; we finished on top for a reason,” Swan said shortly before training at Gosch’s Paddock on Friday morning.
“We like to think we’ve got a good game plan and our structures can hold up. We’ve been practising all year for this round right now, so hopefully they hold up and we win.
“The last couple of weeks, we certainly didn’t go out there to take our foot off the pedal, but subconsciously it probably is at the back of your head a bit that we’ve got finals in two weeks.
“We’re all ready to go, and we certainly won’t leave any stone unturned this Saturday night.”
Swan declared teammate Alan Didak, who has been struggling with a shoulder injury, to be “100 per cent” fit. He added that full-back Simon Prestigiacomo had been “touch and go” to return from a severely corked thigh, but the club had erred on the side of caution.
The prolific onballer scaled back his training in the latter stages of the season, but will hit the finals with a full head of steam.
“I probably feel the best I have in six to eight weeks,” he said.
“I probably didn’t do a lot of training over the last month, but I’ve finally been able to get out on the track and train properly. I’ve been doing everything for the last two or three weeks, so I feel really good.
“I haven’t got any problems at all this year, so I’ve got no excuses not to perform in a final.”
The Bulldogs haven’t fared well on the injury front in recent weeks with the loss of Adam Cooney and Dale Morris and injury clouds over Ryan Griffen and Brad Johnson.
“I don’t know how many injury problems they’ve got,” Swan said.
“They’ve probably only got two out of their best side that aren’t playing. I’m not sure they’ve got heaps of injuries, but we’d be confident no matter who was playing.”
Collingwood is entering its fifth finals campaign in succession, and Swan said the playing group was comfortable with the expectation it will take into September after winning the minor premiership.
“The weight of the thousands of Collingwood supporters happens every week for us,” he said.
“We’re used to it. We always play in front of big crowds. Playing at Collingwood, there’s always huge pressure to perform week in, week out with all the media focused on us and how many fans we have.”
Swan takes the added pressure of being a hot tip for this year’s Brownlow medal into the finals, but the speculation on his chances is "not really that important at the moment".
“There’s not much you can do about other people writing about individual awards, but we’ve got finals [to focus on] now,” he said.
“Maybe on the Monday night [of the count] you’ll think about it, but it doesn’t enter your head while we’ve got a finals campaign to focus on."