Swans win battle of the birds to end year on high

SYDNEY finished its 2024 AFLW season on the right note, comfortably defeating Waalitj Marawar.

Reflecting on how the match panned out post-match, Sydney coach Scott Gowans said that he believed that “just executing for four quarters” was the key to turning around the losing streak his side was on.

“I felt we did that for probably the first time this year where we’ve actually implemented something that we wanted to work on during the week and then brought it into the game and been able to keep it going,” Gowans said.

“That was really important and then West Coast to their credit, they had a really red hot crack and we knew they’d try and outnumber at the contest so we tried to win it on the outside and I thought for large parts of the game we were able to do that and got a lot of score off that.”

Despite how dominant his side had performed, Gowans said he was not feeling frustrated about what could have been this season.

“I mean, we’re still in a developmental phase and the difference is that if you were getting results that were up and down all the time, but if you take the North Melbourne and the Brisbane games out of it, which clearly they’re very good teams, everything else has been fairly even, and it’s either gone our way or hasn’t gone our way,” Gowans said.

“It’s not anything that you’re looking at and going we’ve got a huge hole here, we need to fix that. “It’s just little bits and pieces. “So I think for that reason, I don’t really get frustrated with it.”

The retiring Brooke Lochland joined her coach at the post-match press conference and said the emotions of ending her AFLW career had not really sunk in yet.

“Obviously I’ll be able to reflect in time and it’s only been kind of this week, but the first thing that comes to mind is how grateful I am,” Lochland said.

“Grateful to be able to play for nine seasons for two incredible clubs and obviously finishing at the Sydney Swans. It’s a wonderful club. It’s a club that I’m so grateful to have been a part of, and I know that our players are in great hands for the future.”

Lochland was given the duty of the final rev up before the match, and the star forward said her message was simple.

“We just have a little saying in the forward line to just try and keep it in there, and it was just them kind of repeating after me. So just get them up and about and it worked,” Lochland explained.

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