PATTY FOCUS PERIL
Longmire aware of the Danger, but other Cats also pose threat
COACH John Longmire concedes there is not much the Swans can do about Patrick Dangerfield, but consoles himself with the knowledge that there is not a lot the Cats can do about Josh Kennedy.
Whether one cancels out another remains to be seen. What is certain is Geelong and Sydney’s midfields are constellations with more than one pair of bright stars.
Longmire knows to concentrate on just one would be a mistake.
“We obviously talk about Dangerfield, [Joel] Selwood, [Mitch] Duncan, [ Sam] Menegola, their midfield group is a really good group,” he said.
“Dangerfield and Selwood are key players in that group. We talk about them, we have some ideas, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be implementing them just yet.
“The hardest blokes to try to do something with are the blokes that are so good in the contest. I was reading today he’s [Dangerfield] had the record amount of contested possessions this year over and above Josh Kennedy’s record.
“We know with Josh those players are really hard to quell because they’re so good in 50/50 situations. We’ve talked about him clearly, but whether we can do anything about him we’ll wait and see. [It’s] just about making sure our midfield group play really strongly against their midfield group, a lot of games are decided on those midfield battles and mostly one group against the other.
“Obviously his impact on games is significant. He’s a massive competitor. When you get him and Selwood together, two huge competitors with talent, that’s a pretty lethal combination.
“You can have one on him or two on him at various stages and he’ll still win the 50/50 ball, but we’ve got a few blokes who are strong at the contest and go well at the 50/50 stuff. That’s one part of the game, then it’s about our ball movement and our 18man defence.”
Dangerfield racked up 386 contested possessions in the home-and-away season to pass Kennedy’s record of 368 set in 2012, the year of the last Swans flag. The pair share between them the top five highest tallies in the history of the game.