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Michael Voss expects his improving Brisbane Lions to show ‘Queensland spirit’ in a testing AFL challenge away to high-flying Sydney.
The Lions have won three of their past four games to move within one win of eighth spot.
Second-placed Sydney have won their past four games and dominated recent exchanges with Brisbane.
The Swans have won four in a row against the Lions, inflicting 52 and 68-point drubbings in their 2011 clashes.
“It’s something that we want to be able to rectify. They have been able to roll us a little bit too easily on occasions,” Voss said on Friday.
“It’s about being able to maintain that Queensland spirit. Get down there and see whether we can do the Queenslanders proud – that’s what we’ll be carrying down there a little bit.”
Sydney won’t be lulled into any false sense of security by Brisbane’s unflattering ladder position.
“They’ve got some absolute champions up there, so they are definitely not a team that you can ever take lightly,” Sydney’s Tony Armstrong said.
With three teams level on points with Sydney and surging Hawthorn one win further back, the Swans are anything but complacent.
“It’s such a log jam in all different parts of the ladder and, if you drop one game, you can find yourself behind the eight-ball,” Armstrong said.
“So every week is a must-win game and we’ll be treating it as such.”
The Swans named an unchanged side for Saturday’s clash at the SCG while injuries forced Brisbane into three changes.
Ash McGrath (leg), Mitch Golby (foot) and Jared Polec (foot) have been replaced by Patrick Karnezis, Jack Crisp and Cheynee Stiller, who will play his 100th game.
With Jonathan Brown and Daniel Merrett providing effective key forward targets, Sydney’s defence – which has conceded the fewest points in the competition – is on alert.
“I think we might have our work cut out. Obviously, Browny has been there a long time and the last few weeks he’s stepped it up,” Sydney key defender Heath Grundy said.
Voss said he thought his new-look forward line was very dangerous and would have opposing sides wondering how to combat it.
“You’ve got to have a couple of big roosters down there that can do a job for you and they (Brown and Merrett) have both been doing pretty well,” Voss said.
“They have both been doing a hell of a lot of work and, as a result, we’ve got other goalkickers and we’re not reliant on one particular goal source now.”
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