Sydney coach John Longmire is determined to fix the stoppage woes contributing to his club’s inconsistent start to the AFL season.
The Swans have lost three out of four, including both of their home games, heading into Saturday’s clash with Richmond at Marvel Stadium.
Longmire noted Sydney’s inside 50 entries were up on last season but they were kicking less and conceding more goals than in 2017 and pointed to their indiscipline at stoppages, where they have been caned by umpires.
“We’ve just been inconsistent in all areas of our game, we just haven”t been able to string together a four quarter performance,” Longmire said on Monday.
We’ve been really poor at scores against from stoppages, it’s been a consistent theme and it’s an all over team structure we need to get right and make sure we get better at.
“We can’t keep leaking goals as much as we are from those stoppage situations.
“We’re down a goal than what we were last year attack-wise, but we’re down almost two goals defence-wise and a bit of that is coming from our stoppages and not just directly around the source, where we’re giving too many free-kicks away.
Longmire disagreed with the assertion his star forward Lance Franklin had been selfish in last Thursday’s home loss to Melbourne, describing him as a “team-first player.’
“Generally you’d have to say he’s not a selfish player, he’s been fantastic as far as bringing other players into the game,” Longmire said.
“As all players do he made some decisions that you’d like to look back and do again, it’s as simple as that with Lance and I’m not too concerned about him in that regard.”
Longmire expected Isaac Heeney to be fine for Saturday’s game after hurting his hip in last Thursday’s game.
He said recruited forward Dan Menzel was back training last week after his latest groin injury setback and was probably another week or two away from coming back through the NEAFL.