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Swans desperate to salvage season

Roar Guru
1st August, 2010
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While Geelong are looking forward to next week’s showdown with Collingwood after dismissing Sydney on Saturday night, the Swans are clinging to a once-promising AFL season that is in danger of fading away.

A re-tooled Sydney line-up burst out of the blocks with five wins in their opening six games and they have sat amongst the finals contenders throughout the year, but their 53-point hiding to the Cats reduced their record to 9-9.

The heavy defeat to Geelong, added to last week’s embarrassing 73-point loss to Melbourne, also put a huge dent in Sydney’s percentage and dropped them below Carlton (9-9) into eighth place.

With matches against Hawthorn, Fremantle and Western Bulldogs over the next three weeks, Sydney are in huge danger of fading from finals contention in coach Paul Roos’ final year in charge.

They are still missing some key personnel, with Daniel Bradshaw, Craig Bolton and Mark Seaby still at least two weeks away.

Roos knows his current line-up is some distance behind the likes of Geelong in terms of talent, but he is still confident in their prospects for this season and the future.

“The difference in talent level is just too great at the moment,” he said.

“I think if we’d done everything right (against Geelong) we could’ve won, but you need to do everything right.

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“You can’t turn the ball over, you can’t miss shots at goal.

“To be a really good team, which is our goal again obviously after being there in ’05 and ’06, you can see where you’ve got to get to.

“It’s still a fair way off but I thought in terms of our effort, with the team that we’re putting on the field at the moment, they’re really trying.”

One area Sydney are obviously struggling is finding avenues to goal in Bradshaw’s absence.

Jesse White has been given an enormous opportunity to cement a place in the forward line, but Roos is losing patience with the 22-year-old.

He has returned just 18 goals from his 15 matches in 2010, finishing goal-less on eight occasions.

And White’s lack of physicality is frustrating the Sydney coach.

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“It’s certainly something that we’ve been harping (on) at him about. At some point, you don’t treat them as a young player,” he said.

“If you get told a hundred times, you’d better start doing it at some point or someone else does. That’s the reality of how footy goes.

“He does need to do it a little bit quicker than what he’s learning at the moment.”

Nick Smith could return from a hamstring injury against the Hawks, but Lewis Roberts-Thomson and Craig Bird are still a fortnight away.

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