The 15.15 105 to 7.4 46 win was set up by a second and third-quarter blitz and pushed them almost nine clear on win percentage of fifth-placed Gunnedah Bulldogs.

Todd Fagan sparked the middle-term onslaught, kicking three in the second quarter and at one point two in the space of a couple of minutes in the third as the visitors piled on another six to carry a 78-point lead into the final term.

He finished with six for the game and was almost unstoppable up front.

They had a big focus, coach Todd Dunn said, on getting their small forwards in front of his feet.

“He’s a good mark there,” he said and provided plenty of opportunities for those around him.

Dunn said Saturday “had its moments”.

“We played a good second and third quarter – started putting it together,” he said.

“We had a focus on playing really lower and harder on the footy in the contested footy.” 

They outplayed the Swans on the ground and in the air, and seemed to always have numbers around the Swans when they had the ball.

They just smothered them basically.

“Another big focus was putting pressure on the ball carrier and trying to force a turnover,” Dunn said. 

The result in the third quarter was the Swans didn’t have a shot on goal. They would have only got inside the 50 a couple of times.

In contrast, the Eagles were  able to penetrate the Swans’ defence fairly easily, their 15 behinds to the Swans’ four underlining that.

Dunn said they probably didn’t execute their run and carry as they would have liked but being a tightly-contested game probably didn’t facilitate that.

The Eagles looked like continuing their run when they scored from the fourth quarter bounce but they didn’t kick another after that.

The Swans  kicked four.

“The first and last quarters were very good,” Swans’ Josh McKenzie said.

“The effort and structure held up in the first quarter the way we wanted it to.” 

That fell away in the second quarter.

“We were probably outmatched in key parts of the ground at times,” he said.

He thought they were best served by Jack Abbott, James Dunstan and Thomas Byrnes, the latter kicking two along with Trumaine Rankmore.

Fagan was well supported by Andrew Weymer and Jake Stringer, who was having his first game back for a few weeks.