Morning all, it’s Tuesday and as we settle into our day, the last one before ANZAC day, we’ve been hit with some early team news, and it isn’t good. We recorded our podcast last night with a question for our listeners; ‘should we bring Kurt Tippett back’. We received a range of responses, anywhere from incredulity to luke-warm support for the big fella.
Well, the news from the Swans camp this morning might add a bit of fuel to that fire, or certainly stoke the frustrations with his retirement, since they announced that Lance Franklin will miss the Geelong clash, with a bruised heel sustained against the Eagles. This is about as bad as it gets for the Swans faithful
Panic has certainly set in, baby out with the bath water sort of responses have ensued, all reasonable responses given the news and situation we find ourselves in. A complete darth of forward line options, with Callum Sinclair our last hope. Either way, the Swans will have to debut someone, unless they look at playing Aliir as the forward-ruck option.
Form and fitness is another concern for the NEAFL squad since they had the bye on the weekend. Aliir wasn’t able to build his match fitness, while Amartey and McCartin are unlikely to debut. It leaves the Swans with one choice only – Darcy Cameron.
It could be the making of a terrific career, the way that Naismith announced himself against Geelong in his second AFL game, but he’s more likely to come up a bit short against Smith – if he plays – and Stanley. It’s not a great situation for the Swans, given Franklin has kicked the majority of their goals this season.
A week is a long time in footy, seems painfully ironic that I think about it now, given I came up with the title last night. It was more reflective of the fact that the team could reset and put its mind ahead to their next game, but they’re going to have to do it without two of their best players.
Chances come, and chances go and it’s up to the players to take them when they present themselves. We’ve all got our players, favourite vices and pet peeves, but when it comes to the Swans, we all unite together. It might be a bridge too far this weekend, but you never know, we’ve certainly overcome greater adversity before, and on a far bigger stage.
Geelong have their own injury and suspension concerns, with Scott Selwood in doubt with concussion, Joel Selwood missing through suspension, Gary Ablett still out with a hamstring despite the Cats stating he could ‘possibly’ return. Hawkins was withdrawn last week, Taylor is out for a while, and there’s plenty of other issues facing them.
We discussed plenty on the show last night, but it all seems to pale in comparison to today’s team news. It’s certainly a flat feeling this morning, shared amongst the Swans faithful, but as always, bring on the weekend!
We do have some news to share. We’re recording a new weekly podcast, starting next week, called ‘SwansCast Extra’. You might have seen the announcement on Facebook and Twitter yesterday, and perhaps wondered what and why.
Our standard podcast includes reflective discussions about the Swans, general AFL news and performances of the teams over the weekend, as well as previews and predictive discussions of the weekend ahead. We’ve noticed that listeners don’t like to listen to very long episodes. We’ve been mindful of this and made a concerted effort to reduce the overall time of the episode to 60 minutes or less, reduce waffle, and try to keep a bit more on-topic.
So, we’re changing up the structure and format to keep it short and sharp. We’re going to treat our regular Monday podcast as our weekly review cast, as well as interviews with past or current players, staff and popular fans. It’ll change a little bit, but not much. Our Thursday cast (or Wednesday for those weeks when we play on Thursday night) will focus on the weekend ahead, and it’s where we’ll give our predictions.
Both episodes will run for 25-to-30 minutes, perfect bite size for that drive home, train ride into the city, or something to keep you occupied at work. We’re going to record our guest interviews off-air as well, so we don’t keep them on air for hours on end. Hopefully, this will encourage some of our previous guests to re-appear, if only for 10-15 minutes to let us know what’s going on each week.
Please welcome our first guests for the SwansCast Extra show, Steven Park and Heather Quinlan. We’re delighted to have them on, especially with Heather becoming a SwansCast regular and Steven rejoining us from his sabbatical.
In this weeks' episode I'm joined by Steven Park and we discuss the disappointing loss to the Crows on Friday night, as well as preview the Cats game. I'm still a bit sick, so you'll have to forgive my nasally performance this time.
It's another great episode, so give it a listen and get your questions and comments to us ahead of next weeks' episode and the SwansCast Extra - more news on that to come.
Enjoy the week and the episode! As always, hit us up on social media using the tag @theswansblog, or the hash tag #SwansCast and #SwansCastExtra.
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