Cats identify Swan as key

GEELONG midfielder Cameron Ling has identified Collingwood's Brownlow Medal fancy Dane Swan as a key man to stop in Saturday night's preliminary final at the MCG.

The 28-year-old has found himself opposed to Swan more often than not in recent clashes and is line to get the job again on the weekend.

And he knows the job is one of the toughest in football, given Swan's 2009 form.

"He’s a hard runner and he’s also footy smart. "You can put up with blokes who just junk run and can’t find the footy but with Dane Swan he can just constantly get the ball and constantly hurts you," Ling said on Thursday at Skilled Stadium.

"I rate him very, very highly. I don’t know if I’ll get him yet – that’s up to Bomber – but I know that if I do, I’ll certainly have my hands full."

Ling said he wasn't feeling any extra pressure to go all the way this year and played a straight bat when asked about Magpie's coach Mick Malthouse's attempts to raise the stakes in a newspaper column this week.

Malthouse said Geelong was under "excruciating pressure" to win the premiership. While having read only snippets of the column, it didn’t faze Ling.

"[From the] players’ point of view, we’ve just let it go," he said. "Mick and Bomber (Geelong coach Mark Thompson) are both entitled to say whatever they feel like saying.

"There’s always a little bit of banter between the coaches in the media, so that’s up to them – it’s nothing to do with the players.

"It hasn’t even been mentioned in the playing group and it doesn’t bother me. It’s all part of the build-up I suppose."

The Cats were instead focused on stopping the Magpies and what they had to do to get the job done, he said.

"No, there’s no pressure," Ling said. "Within the group we want to achieve obviously the ultimate success, and that’s what drives us.

"It has done for the 10 years that I’ve played footy … I want to be part of premiership success but we really try to ignore outside factors.

"We know what our ultimate goal is … fortunately we’re in a position now where we’re a couple of weeks away from achieving that if we do everything right."