Swans recall promising star for Lions game
Sydney offered another chance to promising AFL forward Trent Dennis-Lane, on the day as the future of veteran spearhead Daniel Bradshaw became even more clouded.
Dennis-Lane, who kicked 13 goals in Sydney's past two reserves games, was recalled to the senior side for Saturday's away game with Brisbane.
Andrejs Everitt also earned a recall while rookies Luke Parker and Lewis Johnston were dropped.
Sydney agreed to a request for time off from Bradshaw, who wanted to consider his future.
A series of knee injuries has prevented him playing this season, after limiting him to nine appearances last year.
The 32-year-old forward recently underwent another bout of surgery and spoke to Sydney coach John Longmire last Friday and again earlier this week.
"He's coming back from another knee operation and struggling to get his head around another rehab, so he's decided to take some time off. And we as a football club obviously support that and we'll wait and see what he decides," Longmire told reporters on Thursday.
Longmire declined to put a deadline on Bradshaw's decision, but said he would not be rushed into an answer "because most importantly, he's a legend of the game and he's had a couple of big challenges to try and get over in regards to a couple of serious knee injuries".
He didn't want to speculate on whether Bradshaw would play again and said the player himself wasn't 100 per cent sure either.
"He's just making sure that if he does decide to come back, he does it for the right reasons, but also he's considering giving it away," Longmire said.
Longmire did however suggest the club would have considered it a bonus if Bradshaw had been able to play again after his last bout of surgery.
"When he had the last operation, it was a case of 'well, if he comes back, it's really cream on top of the cake'.
"We need to develop our next generation of players coming through anyway and we've been working away at doing that. That's what we'll continue to do regardless of what decision Daniel makes."
The club's emerging forward options include 19-year-old centre half forward Sam Reid, who has played every game this season, 20-year-old Johnston, after his senior debut at full forward last week, and 22-year-old Dennis-Lane, with 18 goals in eight games in his 2010 rookie campaign.
Sydney are averaging two goals a game less over their first nine games than last year, and have kicked more than ten goals only once in their past six matches.
"Would we like to kick some more goals? Yeah, that would be good obviously, but we are working on it," Longmire said.
"We know we need to improve, but we're giving some players opportunities in that part of the ground.
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