With only two pre-season games remaining before the premiership season starts, Jude Bolton believes the intensity will be lifted this weekend against Collingwood at Narrandera.
“Most of our senior guys are rested a week prior to the first round so we've only got this week and the following week to get ourselves right and you really want to be in good form and running the games out well,” Bolton said before training on Wednesday afternoon.
“Last weekend was my first game and for a few other guys it was their first run too, we rested a number of guys who had a couple of practice games before that, so we're ready to go full tilt this weekend."
Bolton believes the game is a dress rehearsal for the season opener against West Coast.
“We can't wait to get down there to Narrandera, by all accounts I think it's going to be a sellout down there but for us it's really a dress rehearsal for round one," he said.
“We had a pretty ordinary practice match against Richmond last weekend with a lot of guys probably chasing kicks and trying to get themselves into form, but we want to put things in place of how we want to play in round one.”
Bolton and coach Paul Roos are looking forward to captain Barry Hall making his first appearance in the pre-season - in what will be his first game with former St Kilda teammate Peter Everitt since 2001.
“It's going to be great to have Baz back out there on Friday and also playing alongside Spida,” Bolton said.
Roos added, “I'm sure they would be excited, there's some history there.
“The first game of the year is exciting and when you are playing for another club, like Spida has done and then to play with an old teammate, it's good to have a familiar face around.
“I think they are both looking forward to it.”
The Swans leading goalkicker will be eased back into the action this weekend and will probably play 50-60 minutes.
“He's in pretty good shape and looking forward to getting out there, 50-60 this week, then next week and we might have to play him again the week after just depending on how he goes," the coach said about the possibility of playing him in the reserves during the final weekend before the start of the home-and-away season.
After playing in Canberra for two consecutive weeks and Narrandera this weekend, the Swans are hoping to play at home (Telstra Stadium) in the final week of the pre-season competition.“We'd love to not travel, we'd love to be able to play in Sydney and stay here and prepare ourselves for round one,” Roos said.“We are likely to play Port Adelaide, they are in really good form and have a lot of their best players playing.“Normally it doesn't matter who you play in the last round they always tend to play their best team.“The only ones who maybe hold back in the last weekend of the trial games are the teams that get beaten in the semi-finals of the NAB Cup, so it's not ideal to play those two teams in the last round because often they rest a lot of their players.“It's actually good to be able to play a team that is trying to do a similar thing to what we are."
