Kieren’s blog
By Kieren Jack
I didn’t play in a lot of finals as a kid playing for Pennant Hills. I played in one Grand Final when I was 13 and we lost, I was shattered.
That was last my Grand Final before last year so I didn’t have a lot of success as a young kid but obviously since I’ve been a the Swans, we’ve been fortunate to play in quite a few finals series.
I think that’s the culture you want to breed at the club – you thrive for finals, that’s what you play for and that’s what we’re striving for.
There’s certainly a lot more on the line when it comes to finals, you can come to a scenario where it is win or you’re out so it certainly ramps up a fair bit.
You want to be playing your absolute best and giving your absolute all.
We’re all very competitive beasts out there; we’re all trying to win so it’s the best footy that gets played – it’s in close, it’s tight, it’s hard, you can’t hide anywhere and generally you need your best 22 performing.
You can’t rely on too few so it is your team, you play for each other and it’s pretty special when you have finals wins.
Probably personnel-wise, we’ve changed a little bit from last year and for a few players it will be their first finals game and finals experience so we’ll certainly speak to them during this week.
The good thing is we’ve experienced over the last couple of weeks some finals-like games. We played Hawthorn Friday night, Geelong a couple of weeks ago and Collingwood previous to that, they’re the type of games you want to be exposed to and you want to expose the young players to.
It was good to see Harry Cunningham, Brandon (Jack), coming in and experiencing that. We’ve obviously got some players to come back in this week – Dan Hannebery and Nick Smith – they’re proven finals players and it will be good to have them back but it’s also good to have the younger players come in and be exposed to that level.
You hear the talk that finals are different but until you experience it, it’s a bit of an unknown. I’m sure they’ll do really well, they’re good kids, they’re determined, they’ve been buying into our structures and our game plan all year and that won’t change.
People talk about it and they say that finals step up a gear but until you’ve probably experienced it, you don’t really know. It certainly lifts and it’s the best teams on the biggest stage going at it for the ultimate prize, there’s a lot on the line.