Milestone game won’t distract Franklin, Swans

Anna Harrington | June 8, 2023

Sydney are determined to make the most of Lance Franklin’s 350th game but don’t expect the superstar forward to be distracted by the occasion for a crucial clash with St Kilda.

Franklin will become the 22nd player to reach 350 AFL games when he steps onto the SCG turf against the Saints on Thursday night.

“He’s played some pretty big games over the years. Did you see the 1000 goals here last year – that was a pretty big game,” coach John Longmire told reporters.

“He’s just used to that type of pressure that comes with playing and performing.

“He’s done it his whole life and the expectations that come alongside that. So he usually gets himself in a pretty good space.

“He’ll be mindful that the most important thing is for us to be competitive in the way we play footy tomorrow night. That’s the most important thing from his perspective and everything else goes along side that.”

Franklin has historically loved playing the Saints in milestone games at the SCG, booting 9.4 against them in his 200th in 2014 and 4.2 in his 300th in 2019.

But he has kicked just 10 goals in eight games this year and was goalless against Carlton in the Swans’ last outing.

“Physically he’s OK. It’s just a matter that at 36 years-of-age we would have loved to manage him a bit more – there’s no question about that,” Longmire said.

“But because of the injuries we’ve had to our key position players we’ve been forced to play him a bit more than we planned at the start of the year.

“Coming off the bye last week hopefully he’s up and feeling good.”

Sydney enjoyed back-to-back wins against North Melbourne and Carlton before the bye and Longmire was confident they were starting to find their groove before facing the fifth-placed Saints.

“We’ve played some good footy at times during the first half of the year, but it hasn’t been at the length of the game that we needed,” he said.

“Last week it was at a consistency level that we like to be able to strive for. That’s our challenge for the backend of the year, is to make sure that we bring that consistency and not just play a quarter here or there.

“Our players believe that, now it’s a matter of that we go out and action it.”