2005 AFL Grand Final - Sydney Swans & West Coast Eagles

2005 AFL Grand Final Match between The West Coast Eagles and Sydney Swans Football Club on Saturday 24 September will be played at MCG.

Many have favored The Eagles to win this year's Premiership and they have pretty good reasons for it. The West Coast Eagles has shown strong and consistent play during the season and they have been dominating the league except for several recent matches where they produced disappointing results. The confidence has increased after seeing their result in the last match where The Eagles defeated Adelaide Crows by 16 points giving the end result 14.9 (93) for West Coast and 11.11 (77) for Adelaide.

In addition, the previous match between West Coast Eagles Football team and The Swans ended with four-point margin when The Eagles defeated the Swans in the Qualifying Round.

However with such confidence in winning the Championship, The Eagles also have their own problems.

Their midfielder Michael Braun suffered a knee injury, which is likely going to keep him off the AFL Grand Final on Saturday. He hurt his left knee in early minutes of the Preliminary Round Match against The Crows. Despite that injury, he still believes that he has a good chance to play at the Saturday's Grand Final.

Beside Michael Braun, Phil Matera is also added the possible missing list on next match with a groin injury, and another possible miss for The West Coast will be Travis Gaspar who is facing a possible one-match ban after his strike on Adelaide's Ken McGregor.

The good news from West Coast is the come back of their forward Michael Gardiner who has recovered from foot injury that kept him from playing in several games. He is expected to be ready for the next match.

On the other side is Sydney Swans and their major blow would be the possibility to play the Grand Final without their captain Barry Hall. Hall has been facing a one-week ban for level-2 offence after the striking incident on St Kilda's Matt Maguire on their Preliminary Final match last Saturday.

With the chance of their captain ruled out of the next match, The Swans are still sure that they are able to win the Cup specially when looking at the result of their previous match against the same club. Their good defensive record also added to their optimism on handling the game in the Grand Final and it could cause some problem for the opposition team.

AFL Grand Final 24 September 2005 at MCG, Gates open 8am for MCC members, 9.45am for general public.