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Longmire wary of another red hot AFL side

Sydney AFL coach John Longmire is wary of facing another in-form AFL side in Melbourne on Friday but insists his team wont be drained by two last gasp wins.

Sydney Swans midfielder Zak Jones
Dashing midfielder Zak Jones will return to Sydney's side for Friday's AFL clash with Melbourne. (AAP)

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Source: AAP


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Sydney coach John Longmire is confident a couple of stirring comebacks haven't drained energy from his surging side heading into Friday's clash against another in-form AFL adversary.

SIx victories from their past seven games have lifted the Swans to within one win of the eight after their awful 0-6 start to the season.

They face a significant challenge on Friday at the MCG against fifth-placed Melbourne, who have won their last four matches.

Last week Sydney were up against an Essendon side that had beaten Port Adelaide by 70 points in their previous game and the round before that they faced a Richmond side coming of back-to-back victories.

"We seem to have played teams in the best possible form over the last three or four weeks, that's been a real test for us," Longmire said on Wednesday.

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"It happens again this week with Melbourne, they are in absolute red hot form and all their stats indicate that they are playing a really strong brand of footy.

"Their pressure stats are huge they put enormous pressure on around the ball, they've got great contested ball numbers and they play a pretty quick brand of footy."

Sydney were forced work hard to overturn significant deficits against Essendon and Richmond, but Longmire isn't worried his players had expended too much energy in winning those games.

"No, I think it just shows you that you need to make sure you dig deep against whoever your playing, in particular the ones that are in red hot form and you have to play to the final siren," he said.

"We've been able to do that the last couple of weeks, we don't want to absolutely rely upon that.

"You want to make sure you play a good strong brand of footy early during the game to be able to get you that buffer, but if required, you've also got to have the confidence to dig in when you need to."

Longmire confirmed midfielder Zak Jones would regain his place after serving a suspension.

He said defenders Jarrad McVeigh and Aliir Aliir were both a chance of playing returning to the side on Friday, but it would depend how they pulled up after Wednesday's training.


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