“Our rivalry with the Swans is an interesting one. We probably developed this over the last three to four years,” Lonergan said.
“Our cultures always compared I suppose,” Lonergan said.
“We’ve both got terrific leaders around the place, and I think we’re both keen to play football the right way, pretty hard an ferocious.
“But I suppose we’re teams that are pretty humble as well,” Lonergan said.
Stokes agreed that the inclusive and community nature of the two clubs are alike.
“We have an enormous amount of respect for the Swans and I feel, when we play them, they have that respect for us as well,” Stokes said.
“We’re very similar in a lot of ways, (especially) with the culture of their footy club and ours. We always try to put the team first,” Stokes said.
The Cats have won 12 of the last 14 matches against the Swans, a remarkable stat for two fairly evenly matched teams, over the last five years particularly.
“With the Swans you know exactly what you’re going to get, it’s going to be a hard game. You don’t want to go into it 80% because you know it’s going to be brutal.
“They’re tough, they tackle hard; they’re a hard team. Going up against them, it’s always about mental toughness and trying to push through the pain barrier with those guys, because when they bring it, they bring it as good as anybody in the AFL," Stokes said.
With the multi-million dollar addition of Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin, the Swans forward line (that already boasted former Adelaide man Kurt Tippett) has been the most talked about in the competition.
“This year it takes a little bit more, with ‘the Buddy factor’ but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference. They’re still going to be the same team, they’re still going to go about their footy the same way, but they’re just going to have another big guy up their in the forward line,” Stokes said.
“Obviously this year they’ll be even better with the inclusion of ‘Buddy’ playing in their forward line. It’s going to be an even tougher task for us as defenders,” Lonergan said.
Although Stokes was confident ‘Buddy’ wouldn’t make a huge different to the Swans game, he wasn’t volunteering to help out the guys in defense anytime soon.
“I wouldn’t like to be Harry (Taylor) or ‘Domsy’ (Tom Lonergan) in that game. Hopefully as a midfield group we can try and keep it off them as much as we can. But I won’t be putting my hand up to go down back that game,” Stokes said.
Geelong will line up against Sydney on Thursday night at 7.10 at the SCG.
