Sydney are decided to take advantage of Lance Franklin’s 350th recreation however do not count on the celebrity ahead to be distracted by the event for an important conflict with St Kilda.
Franklin will develop into the twenty second participant to succeed in 350 AFL video games when he steps onto the SCG turf in opposition to the Saints on Thursday evening.
“He’s played some pretty big games over the years. Did you see the 1000 goals here last year – that was a pretty big game,” coach John Longmire advised reporters.
“He’s just used to that type of pressure that comes with playing and performing.
“He’s accomplished it his entire life and the expectations that come alongside that. So he normally will get himself in a reasonably good house.
“He’ll be mindful that the most important thing is for us to be competitive in the way we play footy tomorrow night. That’s the most important thing from his perspective and everything else goes along side that.”
Franklin has traditionally cherished taking part in the Saints in milestone video games on the SCG, booting 9.4 in opposition to them in his 2 hundredth in 2014 and 4.2 in his three hundredth in 2019.
But he has kicked simply 10 objectives in eight video games this 12 months and was goalless in opposition to Carlton within the Swans’ final outing.
“Physically he’s OK. It’s just a matter that at 36 years-of-age we would have loved to manage him a bit more – there’s no question about that,” Longmire stated.
“But because of the injuries we’ve had to our key position players we’ve been forced to play him a bit more than we planned at the start of the year.
“Coming off the bye final week hopefully he is up and feeling good.”
Sydney enjoyed back-to-back wins against North Melbourne and Carlton before the bye and Longmire was confident they were starting to find their groove before facing the fifth-placed Saints.
“We’ve performed some good footy at instances throughout the first half of the 12 months, but it surely hasn’t been on the size of the sport that we would have liked,” he stated.
“Last week it was at a consistency degree that we like to have the ability to attempt for. That’s our problem for the backend of the 12 months, is to be sure that we deliver that consistency and never simply play 1 / 4 right here or there.
“Our players believe that, now it’s a matter of that we go out and action it.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
