SWANS v SAINTS - MATCH REPORT
Cliff Hammond 13 July 2003

Sydney brushed aside a lamentable St Kilda side by 51 points on Saturday night in front of 27,550 fans at the SCG. Fortunately for the Swans, much of the crowd arrived late for the game, and missed some of the lethargic and bumbling football that was served up by both teams in the first half.

The Victorian media will no doubt be underlining how 'brave' and 'tenacious' the 'young' Saints were until half-time. Unfortunately for the fans, it wasn't a case of St Kilda stepping up and matching the Swans' special brand of exciting running football, but rather the Swans emulating the half-hearted efforts that have dogged the St Kilda Football Club for the past few seasons. This, combined with Sydney re-discovering the goal-kicking yips, produced perhaps the most forgettable half of football so far in this AFL season.

Possibly the only highlight in the first half for Sydney was the return of Jason Saddington after a lengthy injury layoff. Given a free rein by coach Paul Roos, Saddington duly obliged by getting involved all over the ground, and racking up 9 possessions before half-time. But even that went a little sour when Jason picked up an ankle injury which saw him iced-up for the rest of the match.

Ben Matthews also returned after missing one match with an ankle injury, and quickly reminded everyone that he has become a key part of Sydney's impressive defensive unit. From that group, Jared Crouch and Craig Bolton deserve special mention for shutting out the Saints' key forwards, Hamill and Milne.

St Kilda?s blunders with their ruck department are well documented, and suffice to say that Adam Goodes and Jason Ball spent most of the game thoroughly enjoying themselves, and pretty much ensured that the Swans' on-ballers could do as they pleased. Brett Kirk cruised around the ground making Lenny Hayes' life a misery, and still found time to pile-drive Riewoldt nose-first into the SCG turf.

Sydney moved up a gear in the second half, and settled the result in a burst of goals midway through the third quarter. From then on, it was basically the Swans v Robert Harvey, as the Saints champion on-baller ran from one end of the ground to the other trying to patch up all the holes in the St Kilda team. A fruitless task, but as always, he never tired of trying.

There was hardly any real doubt about who was going to win the game; the only real mystery was how the Swans could have 37 scoring shots yet only score 112 points?

Hall, O'Loughlin and Davis all contributed, but couldn't kick straight, and it was left to lesser goal-kicking lights O'Keefe, Nicks and Cresswell to put a little respectability into the Swans' tally. But even then, Cressa managed to bring new meaning to the phrase 'missed a sitter', with one particularly breath-taking attempt from point-blank range. Thank goodness Paul Williams was there to constantly show everyone how a professional footballer should perform.

"I?m very happy. Obviously St.Kilda came to play and early on they were on top," Paul Roos said after the game. "I think the first quarter probably was pretty important as it turned out that we at least got even and not playing great. Then we just worked our way through the game and in the end I thought it was a good result."

"You are always worried when you are kicking a lot of points; we saw what happened last week even though we got up. There is no question the psyche of both teams change when you are kicking goals as against points, but at the end it didn?t make any difference but it certainly could have but thankfully it didn?t."

"The goal-kicking is one thing we really need to focus on. Mick kicked six straight last week and he kicked 1.3 this week and a couple didn?t register so we certainly need to work on those."

"As we know, stoppages are very important, today we had a bit of a luxury in some degree that their ruckmen were out and we were playing against smaller type ruckman but it illustrates how important the stoppages are," he said.

St Kilda coach Grant Thomas was upset with his team's poor second-half effort.

"I think it was a war of attrition, physically they ground us out. 10 minutes into the third quarter we?re six points up and from then on we kick 1.1 and they kick 9.10," Thomas said. "We just have to look deep for those answers as to why that occurs, whether it?s the fact that we?ve got six players under 20 and they?ve only got one in the side, but I think it?s too long a bow to draw to blame it on youth."

"I thought that Blake was doing a reasonable effort on Goodes for probably three quarters and that coincided with when we started to go down ? maybe Blake sort of dropped off a bit and Goodes lifted a notch."

Paul Williams took over the captaincy in the absence of Stuart Maxfield.

"We were slow out of the blocks but we still should've kicked five or six goals in that first quarter," said Williams. "That's something we are going to have to address. We've been pretty good all year but I think a few of us will be going down for some goalkicking practice during the week."

"Barry set up five or six goals. That's the beauty of us, we don't rely on Barry to kick six or seven goals every week. We want him to keep presenting; he's playing a little more centre half-forward, a different role for him and he's been great for us this year."