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Luongo feeling sharp

Image: Massimo Luongo: Targeting promotion the hard way

Massimo Luongo says he feels the best he has since winning the Asian Cup, as he prepares for the League One play-off final.

The Swindon midfielder, who is being tracked by a number of Premier League sides ahead of a potential summer move, was named the most valuable player of the tournament as Australia lifted the Asian Cup on home soil earlier this year. Since returning to Wiltshire, however, Luongo has been plagued by a series of minor injuries but he believes he is in peak condition going into Sunday's game against Preston at Wembley. "This last season has been a really good one - from the World Cup to the Asian Cup to now," he said. "Whatever happens, it'll be a great way to end two great years and if we get promoted it will be even better. Then we do another year and see what happens. "If you asked me maybe a month or two months ago (if he was tired) I would have been but the gaffer and the coaches have done a lot to bubble-wrap me a little bit and spare me a few games, and it's paid off. I'm probably feeling the best I have since coming back from the Asian Cup. "There've been a lot of niggles and little injuries that kept popping up which were also a bit of a distraction. We've overcome that and there's one more game, whatever happens happens and the body's feeling good." Luongo expressed exactly what elevation to the Championship would mean to the Swindon squad. "It'd be unreal," he said. "We know, as a team, that we deserve to get promoted. We deserved to get automatic promotion but we didn't get it that way so we've had to do it the hard way. I think we've learnt from two seasons being at Swindon that nothing easy ever happens to Swindon. "Promotion would be amazing and, as a team and a group of lads who are really close, it'd be a big thing."

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