Stevie J taps into Buddy’s AFL brain

NEW Sydney forwards coach Steve Johnson has enjoyed tapping into the football brain of Swans superstar Lance Franklin but hopes they can also find different scoring avenues.

Johnson, who played 293 games in 16 seasons with Geelong and Greater Western Sydney before accepting his first coaching job with Sydney late last year, is working with Franklin, the 10th highest goalkicker in AFL-VFL history.

“He obviously knows a lot about the game and he watches probably a lot more footy than people realise, he’s been great,” Johnson said.

“It’s been great to get to know him as a person and to see how much he loves footy and just sitting down with him and speaking about footy has been really refreshing, just hearing his ideas.”

Johnson said he’d like to think he could make Franklin an even better player, but stressed Sydney shouldn’t rely too much on Buddy, who has topped their goalkicking chart in each of his first four seasons at the club.

“Hopefully we’ve got some real different avenues to goal,” Johnson said.

“Everyone looks at our forward line and thinks of Buddy straight away and he is a really important player for us.

“But we’ve got some young players coming through, (Will) Hayward, (Tom) Papley. They are really dangerous players. We’ve got some speed down there.”