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After the weekend off this week we travel to Fremantle to take on the Bulldogs who took part in a finals type clash yesterday vs WP at Joondalup.
SF are a big side with strong marking talls in Shaw, Schlensog, Miller, Strom x 2, Wilson, Pearson etc and their new ruckman Free is a solid unit as well who was quite impressive at not only winning hitouts but following up with clearances himself.
They also have a hard core group of experienced mids in Schloithe, Suban, Dragovich, Donaldson, Florenca etc plus young Blechynden who is racking them up. Was quite impressed with newcomer McQuilkan down back too who looks quite astute with the footy.
For Swans it will be interesting to see if Gault & Jetta are back this week after lengthy lay offs and still not sure of the outcome of Riggio's report vs EP???
All in all we will have our work cut out down there and SF will be raging favourites after easily disposing of us at Basso a month or so back.

Hopefully this time the coaching group will come up with some sort of plan to try and restrict the influence of Schloithe who was allowed to run rampant in the last game and used the time and space that he had to create many of Souths attacks. 
I haven't heard anything about Riggios tribunal outcome. I was amazed when I heard he was reported and I assume it must have been related to a scuffle that took place at the members side of the ground during the game. I was sitting on the scoreboard side so I didn't see who was involved. It would be a shame if Matt was rubbed out as I would say that he will not be continuing next year and if that is the case he deserves to be celebrated for his great career in a fitting manner over the last few qualifying games and however many finals matches Swans play. 

Yes we gave the likes of Schloithe, Suban, Dragovich & co far too much space and thus time to carve us up last game Mike.
That in turn gave their forwards like Shaw, Schlensog, Miller, Ninyette etc a feast of footy to score from.....and they sadly did!

Still havent seen anything on the Riggio report from 2 weeks ago.....so we will assume it has been thrown out?!

Looks like Riggio is an out for this game so do we assume he was suspended?
Gault not named again missing his 6th game now, he unfortunately must be still suffering the effects of that knock vs SF last time we played them.
Jetta is back for us.
SF are at full strength minus Dylan Main & Ben Rioli.

 

Looks like Gault is still suffering from lingering effects of delayed concussion and he may miss the rest of the season. Also Matt Riggio has been rested from the SF game so that he is ready for finals and so he is not suspended. Apparently he pulled up a bit sore after the last game and they don't want to risk him.

A lot of interest being shown in this game. Fantastic to hear it is the SportFM broadcast match. Is quite cloudy looking out the window in my locality. Hope the sky not as grey across in the metro area for a good crowd to be present.

An interesting game.
I dont think we played particularly well at all until the last qtr but then we somehow nearly stole it, in fact we should have won but 2 late misses hurt after our straight kicking had kept us in it up until then, and then SF go the length of the field to score from the goal square and then the siren goes soon after at the 25min mark of the last qtr.
We had a lot less disposals, scoring shots and Inside 50s.
If only we actually believed in ourselves more we might be half a sniff as this season is very open and right there for the taking if you are good enough but....................
 

Solid effort for most of the game that South had in control for 3/4 but didn’t put us away and we kept going all day, lucky the result didn’t matter as we went to sleep after doing the work to get back in front.
Backline excellent again, Jones erceg Notte and Stephen’s excellent on ninyette.
Beck’s kicking once again costly out of defence, no idea why he kicks out.
Otto a little trier and Noble a top game.
Watson and O’Sullivan not up to league level
Bad luck for Ireland as was starting to show some good form

A trip to Claremont next week followed by a final at Joondalup the week after.