Full match coverage and stats<\/a><\/p>\nA season that started full of promise after being beaten grand finalists last year is now at risk of petering out with Sydney\u2019s finals hopes almost certainly gone after its defeat to arch-rivals Greater Western Sydney last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t find it tough to get motivated, it’s probably a question you ask of the players,\u201d Cox said when asked if it was hard to motivate the players for what was essentially a dead rubber against the Bombers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think as a footy club we have to finish the year off as well as we possibly can, and that was the message from the start of the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tough to handle the start of the week, when we weren’t mathematically possible to make (the finals), but it’s my job to try and turn their attention pretty quickly to something that we can try and chase.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swans ruck Brodie Grundy showed no signs of slowing down even with finals out of reach as he pressed his claims for a third All-Australian blazer with a dominant performance against the Bombers.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old etched his name in the record books for the most disposals for a player taller than 2m as he gathered a career-high 39 disposals as well as 13 clearances and 32 hitouts.<\/p>\n
Grundy launched his rich vein of form when the Swans were defeated by the Bombers in round nine and has since averaged 23 disposals and eight clearances a game.<\/p>\n
“He put in a really good pre-season and a block to work on his endurance, and not only with his ability to cover the ground,\u201d Cox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis intensity around the ball has been probably a big highlight for a long period of time, certainly this year anyway, and he’s got back to that. He’s fully confident in his ability.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s had a very, very impressive season and continues to play his role extremely well for this footy team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bombers debuted a record-breaking 14th player for the season with Jayden Nguyen called into the side to face the Swans and quickly looking comfortable at the level as he restricted Tom Papley to one goal and little impact on the game. \u00a0<\/p>\n
But even after a brave fightback against the Swans, the Bombers have now lost nine matches in a row as their horror run with injury continues to take its toll.<\/p>\n
Despite the difficulties through the second half of the season, Bombers coach Brad Scott was adamant that morale remains high among the players especially with the captain leading the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cZach Merrett is probably the one who wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s a winner, he’s a competitor, it’s hard for him not to get frustrated at times just because of his will to win,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I keep saying to the players, this is tough, but anything worth doing is tough and you’ve got to persevere through the tough times, and he’s doing that really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have to quite consciously work on the morale of our group. We can’t just say, \u2018it is what it is\u2019. We’re working really hard to keep the players up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How Sydney finishes the rest of a dead rubber season is up to the players, according to coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-39924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}