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Sport Nation
Find your Sport Nation frequencySwans coach Cox hails phenomenal mature-age recruit
Jaiden Sciberras • April 7th, 2025 2:36 pm
With a heavily depleted side, the Sydney Swans travelled to Marvel Stadium and took care of North Melbourne with relative ease.
Approaching the contest, coach Dean Cox was stripped of eight first team locks in Callum Mills, Errol Gulden, Tom Papley, Logan McDonald, Taylor Adams, Justin McInerney, Lewis Melican and Robbie Fox.
Despite this, a dominant second-half performance saw the Swans leap out in the third term to cruise to a 65-point victory, with several unlikely suspects putting in top shelf performances to get the job done.
One of those unlikely heroes was newest recruit Riley Bice. The 24-year-old back-flanker has thoroughly impressed since joining the club from Werribee as a mature-aged recruit and he put the competition on notice with a best on ground performance against the Roos.
26 disposals - 20 of which were kicks - at 85 per cent efficiency, 15 marks, nine intercepts, seven inside fifties and seven score involvements, the VFL premiership player looked every bit a star.
Bice’s performance certainly left a mark on the Swans’ coach Dean Cox, who, speaking on SEN’s Fireball, has been delighted with the recruit’s ability to transition to AFL football.
“He has (surprised me),” Cox said.
“To his credit, he didn’t do a pre-season at Werribee before he went down there, I think he got down there in February last year.
“So, to be able to play the year he did play (was excellent). When he got here, although he is 24, he hadn’t done a lot of the strength work or a lot of the repeat training efforts that you do at an AFL club.
“He has been phenomenal. He came here, we put him on Tom Papley, we did match play, we have done all the things to improve that part of the game, and he’s been playing really good footy defensively.
“The attack part is the natural part for Riley, his ability to run and get the ball and see and option and hit it, really create for us which was evident on Sunday night.”
Bice and the Swans have a significant challenge ahead, taking on the Magpies in Gather Round’s Friday night thriller.
