Tom McCartin is set to miss a third straight game, while Pete Ladhams joins an extensive list of talls on the sideline. (Image: Sydney Swans)
John Longmire has confirmed that the Swans will be without Tom McCartin for this weekend’s clash with Carlton. Sydney continue to be plagued by injury as Pete Ladhams is set to spend multiple weeks on the sidelines.
With both McCartin brothers and Dane Rampe remaining on the sidelines, the Swans will again look to young Will Gould early in his career. Aaron Francis and Nick Blakey will also be expected to line up in the Key defensive positions.
When facing reporters on Wednesday, Longmire was well aware of the challenges ahead, facing Carlton with the likes of Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow.
“Without Paddy and Tommy, and if Dane doesn’t play. There’s three of our starting six [defenders] out from last year,” Longmire said.
“But we’ve been without that for quite a large part of this year, without three of our key position players. We’ve just got to keep making do. We think that [Aaron] Francis has come in and done a pretty reasonable job.
“We’ll have a look at [Lewis] Melican who’s played the last few VFL games. But in the end, we’ll just have to make do against two of the best power forwards in the competition.”
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Tom McCartin has missed the last two games after the Swans took a cautionary approach to some headaches he was feeling during the week. With the concussion history of his brother, Longmire admits the break has been more than they expected, but will continue to take his long-term health into account.
“It’s certainly going longer than we’d hoped,” he said.
“It is what it is, you can’t do anything about it. We’ve just got to let the symptoms dissolve completely.
“He’s doing a bit of exercise, so hopefully he’ll be able to ramp that up over the bye period and we’ll see whathappens post bye.
“If you look at the stats over the last few years, concussion issues are really rising throughout the competition. Players are missing from every club and we have to be mindful that it’s a trend across the competition and unfortunately its happened to a few of our key players.”
Embed from Getty ImagesWith Pete Ladhams going down against North Melbourne, the injuries to Sydney’s talls continue to stack up. He’s going to miss a number of weeks with an injury to a lateral ligament in his ankle, but Longmire won’t use his injury ward as an excuse.
“Pete’s alright,” Longmire said.
“Unfortunately he’s still on crutches and in a moonboot, he’s going to be a number of weeks.
“We’ve got a few of them now, there’s him and Logan [McDonald] still with moonboots and on crutches. But sometimes you just go through those runs and you learn some things about yourself and your team.
It’s not always onwards and upwards but you’re still learning, and what’s what we have the opportunity to do.”
The positive side of Sydney’s injury’s have led to a number of debuts this season, one of those being 209cm ruckman Lachlan McAndrew. McAndrew debuted against North Melbourne last week with an impressive performance and should get an extended run in the side with both Ladhams and Tom Hickey missing time.
“[Lachlan] McAndrew played last week, he’ll play again this week,” he said.
“He played on [Todd] Goldstein last week, he’s the best tap ruckman in the history of the game, so he got to learn a fair bit.
“That’s what we take out of these games, they get to keep learning.”
The Swans will kick off round 11 when they host Carlton at the SCG on Friday night.
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