‘Good luck’: Swans star’s defiant message after horror month
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Sydney star Tom Papley is confident his side can win the premiership, after knocking off Brisbane in Saturday’s qualifying final.
The Swans came into the game vast underdogs, after a difficult month for the club ultimately ended in the suspensions of Isaac Heeney, Nick Blakey, Chad Warner, Riley Bice and James Jordon.
Sydney’s Tom Papley celebrates a goal. via Getty Images
They then lost captain Callum Mills to a significant knee injury in the first quarter of the game, on top of everything else.
Despite that, the Swans remained focused and dominated the Lions for four quarters in the 53-point win.
Papley himself booted five goals on Saturday, and said while his initial focus was on supporting his friends, it quickly turned to ensuring his teammates had faith they could win without them.
“I’m good mates with the boys involved in the incident and it’s hard to comment on some things, but I’m feeling for them and also feeling for the victims involved,” he told Nine’s Sunday Footy Show.
"My sole focus was caring for them. They're my mates, but I also wanted to focus on footy and winning this game.
"I put my sole focus after I cared on those boys on winning the game and I gave the boys so much belief that we could win the game. Every meeting was about belief and trust that we can win.
"It's an amazing achievement and we've got to soak it up because we did yesterday, not many people in Australia had us winning. We've got to build on this, learn from this and we'll do that.
"In my opinion, Brisbane is the best side in the competition and we beat them by 10 goals yesterday. It's full credit to us. I think we played well to put them off their game. If we do that in the prelim, good luck to Geelong or Fremantle."
Papley gave coach Dean Cox and his support staff enormous credit for navigating the difficult fortnight and coming up with a plan to take down the Lions.
"We learned a lot from when they gave us a pantsing earlier in the year. I reckon some of the best coaching I've seen has come in the last week with what the coaches planned this week and the line meetings we had were amazing," the small forward said.
"We knew exactly what we had to do and we did it. Full credit to the coaches. The way they planned the weekend, I sort of can't put it into words without giving too much away. It was an amazing coaching and playing performance.
"Finals is tough to hold that amount of pressure. I think during the game Brisbane thought we were going to fold and they were saying that out there, and we just kept going. It was an amazing effort.
"The two weeks of training up to that point, we trained the house down. That's the best we've trained all season. The drills we did were all about pressure and closing space and chasing and tackling and surging the ball forward and we trained so well and came together on game day. I'm so proud of the boys.
"It was amazing. There were board members in the rooms after the game saying it was the best win in the club's history apart from the premierships. The job's not done yet, but the desire and passion we played with … inside the four walls we believed and that's what we kept doing."
Hawthorn legend Dermott Brereton agrees that the win will go down in club folklore.
"There was a lot of talk you can put around clubs who say 'we're this, we're that' … this will go down as a Bloods victory," Brereton said.
"Not just a Swans victory, it was a Bloods game. It was everything they lean into and become and I just thought it was wonderful."
Sydney will host either Fremantle or Geelong at the SCG in a preliminary final in a fortnight.
