The 21-year-old has been home in Wagga for four days as part of the Swans’ mid-season break and he returned to Sydney on Wednesday night keen to attack the business end of the season.

The Swans are currently second on the ladder, just a game behind Fremantle, and Cunningham believes his team are in a better position this time around.

“We’re probably a little better because we had that very, very slow start, we were one (win) and three (losses) I think it was last year before we started winning some games,” Cunningham said.

“We’re playing some good footy and we need to because the competition is so tight these days, you need to be bringing it week in, week out.

“We’ve set ourselves up really good and looking forward to the challenge ahead.”

Cunningham, with 39 AFL games under his belt now, also experienced a relatively slow start to the year.

He was dropped twice but has responded strongly with his last outing against North Melbourne returning 21 possessions and a goal. 

“It was a bit hard at the start of the year, being in and out of the team, but I think I’m playing some good footy now and I think that’s on the back of some hard work, trying to outwork my opponent and it’s starting to pay off now,” he said.

“Hopefully I can continue that for the rest of the year.”

Cunningham revealed that being left out of the Swans team highlighted there is more to life than football.

“It just spurred me on to go back and play some good footy in the twos,” he said.

“It sort of put a different perspective on life too, that footy’s not everything and I can’t be getting caught up in just footy.

“So I went back to the twos, played some good footy and got back in, now the goal is to stay in there for the rest of the year.”

Cunningham still rates Hawthorn as the team to beat.

“Never write off the Hawks,” he said.