With one eye on a seventh successive finals campaign and the other on the increasing importance of this year’s NAB AFL National Draft, Roos said the Swans would look to play more of their youngsters if they lost to both Collingwood and Adelaide after this weekend’s break.
“One of the things we talked about today with our recruiting guys is that we probably would have liked to play more young guys at the start of the season but they’ve been injured,” Roos said before training at the SCG on Wednesday.
“If you fall behind significantly, that’s one thing we’d really seriously need to look at, at the end of the year. You might be playing kids that don’t deserve a game. I don’t think we’re at that stage [yet] so we’ll try to pick the best team we can.
“Hopefully there will be a few more young kids in the team against Collingwood but they’re ongoing discussions that will take place over the next two or three weeks.”
With five wins from 11 rounds, the Swans sit 10th on the ladder and a game outside the top eight – still well in the finals race in one of the most even seasons in recent memory.
But many of the talented young players who had been earmarked for senior games during the pre-season have struggled to get on the park, much to Roos’ frustration.
Patrick Veszpremi, Lewis Johnston, Nick Smith, Tim Schmidt and Matthew Laidlaw have all had interrupted seasons through injury and Brett Meredith, who played seven senior games, will miss the rest of the season with a broken arm.
Roos said it was difficult to assess the worth of several of those players without seeing them at AFL level – a situation compounded by the need to maximise the club’s access to this year’s draft.
With the impending entry of the Gold Coast and Western Sydney teams, the 2009 national draft is set to be the least compromised draft for several years.
“This year is one where if you had five, six or seven picks, you wouldn’t be unhappy,” he said.
