Game Day Thread: Qualifying Final Sydney Swans vs Hawthorn Hawks

[goswannies]

Woeful selection and coaching peformance from Horse. Cunningham, Lamb, Brandon jack should all have played ahead of an underdone Hannebery, Jetta and one of the talls.

20:20 hindsight vision is very accurate.
But I suspect that if we went in with a physically less imposing, inexperienced side, we still would've been beaten by a far stronger side last night, & the posts of the thread would still read similarly but criticizing the selection of the new kids for not being ready & the kids themselves for capitulating under pressure.
In the cold light of day after a painful loss (and they players will be feeling it emotionally a thousand times more than us, plus the physical exhaustion), fact is, any alternate selection conjecture is simply that ... hypothetical conjecture ... & we will never know what could have been.
As for playing like last week, reality is any team can beat another given the right unique circumstances. But to reproduce those the next week (& to expect your opposition to do the same) is fanciful thinking.
Facts are: we are injury riddled & have been increasingly so all season. Many of our experienced & X-Factor players are underdone. Their replacements (or potential replacements) are less physically mature, inexperienced kids. Our record this year during the home & away season has been solid against side outside the top 6, not so solid against the real contenders (we've beaten Richmond, & drawn with Freo)
BUT anything can happen in finals. You only have to get over the line in a game & you live to fight again next week. While we're alive, we're always going to be a chance.
Have faith that the boys will do their best & what will be, will be.

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If I hear one more commentator saying Hawthorn should have won last year I will go insane hope they lose again this year as they are whinging ducking players who kept bitching about our ruck contests.

They can say that all they like 'til the end of time. History books will forever show that we DID win in 2012. & 'Teaser is a Brownlow medalist when he "shouldn't be" too.

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Who on this site really thinks we will beat Rich|Carlton next week? If we do win we then get Geelong or Freo in Perth. Unforunately we really do look like we are limping in to the finals ths year tired and injured lame ducks.

Ummm me. If we don't think (or at least hope) we don't have a chance, why bother being a Swans supporter?
If we do win next week, we're one win from a Grand Final.

[Jimitron5000]

The only positive I can take out of that was the Hawks fan love for Matthew Spangher.

[0918330512]

The only positive I can take out of that was the Hawks fan love for Matthew Spangher.

Bit of affection from the commentary booth too ... and a few Swans fans were happy for him too ... count me in ... deserves some success after such a hard road (reminds me of Mitch's timing last year ...)

[mcs]

Who on this site really thinks we will beat Rich|Carlton next week? If we do win we then get Geelong or Freo in Perth. Unforunately we really do look like we are limping in to the finals ths year tired and injured lame ducks.

Me. The boys will be really hurting after the poor performance last week, and we rarely put two bad games together. We get two extra days rest, we are at home and have won 5 from 6 finals at homebush. I expect we will be up and about and hoepefully get the job done.

I dont see us getting past the prelim, but despite of course wanting to go back to back, a prelim final would be a seriously good result for a year where we've been severely hampered by injuries to key players. Being in the four best teams of the comp is nothing to sneeze about.

This club and group of players is far too proud to put out another performance like that next weekend - despite injuries, underdone players and jaded players.

[Swansinger]

Not many,if any,were outright bad,but far too few were good enough.Horse says we will "bounce" back next week - but you can't bounce if you're brittle.Whatever the end , we will take a lot of positives from this season and re-emerge as an even stronger team next year.

[stellation]

No run in the side left. Hawks ran harder and had the kicking skills to back it up. Already noted but half the team looks really underdone and with our game plan that makes it very hard to win a game against a quality team

I think that's close to the perfect summary.

[crackedactor]

Do you really think Bolton will be dropped? How can we change for next week.

No they will say he got injured and will be out for at least 3 weeks. He will be given the car ride around ANZ next week to say goodbye. I see that guys are even breaking loose from his tackles, unheard of 12 months ago. They say that Lamb was outstanding last week, so he looks his replacement. DRE was ordinary again and too many guys break his tackles. He did get some good spoiling efforts in though. 50/50 on replacing him with Biggs? The form of many players is a worry. 1. Mitchell was outstanding for the first 4 weeks, even since he has been average
2. Grundy and Smith have really struggled since the half way mark this year
3. Tippett does not look 100% fit
4. Jessie white did do some good things, but his defensive game is very average. Our forward pressure was very poor.

[wolftone57]

I think we are all disappointed because we expected to see the side that played the first 3 quarters last week, but that side spent it all last week. No Buddy and Cyril gave us a very real chance to win this one, but last week turned out to be an aberration in a fading season. We have now lost 4 of our last 5 games, this being our poorest performance.

PS: If this is my vaunted rope-a-dope, it's even better than Ali's. Sad to say, but I have to make a retraction on that one.

Last week we played fit players this week we played unfit players. Hannas was stuffed by half time and he was having major problems keeping up with Smith. Smithy was labouring by the last quarter. Jetts was really stuffed by the end of the third and he had only played one quarter. I would have preferred to play Biggs, Morton & BJ rather than have those three not fit. I said I thought bringing Jetts in was a mistake before the game and there was a doubt on Dan from the fitness staff and I was doubtful about the efficacy of playing him. We should have trusted our youngsters they are good and talented. I think this is a lesson for Longmire, there can't be a pecking order at the Swans or he will lose the respect of the younger players very quickly.

Our experienced players were the ones who stuffed up last night. Macca was carrying on all the time like a Prima donna every time the ball didn't bounce his way from a slightly wayward kick. After all he managed to butcher the ball as many times as his team-mates. The game plan was destroyed because it was a @@@@e game plan. I have wondered why we just bomb the ball down the flank every kick out, Mal & Macca don't even look for a leading player any more. Then we bomb the ball high up and under to the forwards, this is not good delivery. If the forwards had good service then we might have been able to get a few goals, we still wouldn't have won though.

Our mids were destroyed and it was because Longmire took Mummy off. I wouldn't blame him if he went somewhere else next year as he obviously isn't appreciated at Swans. He was the catalyst to so much centre square ball movement and his bullocking got us out of there on quite a few occasions. Bayley got on top as soon as he went off. As a ruckman Pykie is still a second ruck but a very good resting ruck. I think there have to be some hard decisions made at the end of the season, which will probably come next week but we may make it through if we play fit players.

[magic.merkin]

Last week we played fit players this week we played unfit players. Hannas was stuffed by half time and he was having major problems keeping up with Smith. Smithy was labouring by the last quarter. Jetts was really stuffed by the end of the third and he had only played one quarter. I would have preferred to play Biggs, Morton & BJ rather than have those three not fit. I said I thought bringing Jetts in was a mistake before the game and there was a doubt on Dan from the fitness staff and I was doubtful about the efficacy of playing him. We should have trusted our youngsters they are good and talented. I think this is a lesson for Longmire, there can't be a pecking order at the Swans or he will lose the respect of the younger players very quickly.

Our experienced players were the ones who stuffed up last night. Macca was carrying on all the time like a Prima donna every time the ball didn't bounce his way from a slightly wayward kick. After all he managed to butcher the ball as many times as his team-mates. The game plan was destroyed because it was a @@@@e game plan. I have wondered why we just bomb the ball down the flank every kick out, Mal & Macca don't even look for a leading player any more. Then we bomb the ball high up and under to the forwards, this is not good delivery. If the forwards had good service then we might have been able to get a few goals, we still wouldn't have won though.

Our mids were destroyed and it was because Longmire took Mummy off. I wouldn't blame him if he went somewhere else next year as he obviously isn't appreciated at Swans. He was the catalyst to so much centre square ball movement and his bullocking got us out of there on quite a few occasions. Bayley got on top as soon as he went off. As a ruckman Pykie is still a second ruck but a very good resting ruck. I think there have to be some hard decisions made at the end of the season, which will probably come next week but we may make it through if we play fit players.

Most of what you said I agree with, but Bayley was also subbed within minutes of Mumford. Hale was the true big man of theirs that killed us.

[Primmy]

mutter mutter mutter.

I have seen worse....but not for a while......and not with such bad timing.

[Swanno]

I get that our strategy is to bomb it in long, hopefully grab a mark and at the worst keep it in a eventually force a goal out of sheer will. But in the forward 50 and in fact around the ground, when we went long we had absolutely no crumbers, the players have to decide who is gonna fly and who is gonna stay on the ground and impact the following contest. I was especially frustrated with our kick outs, sometimes it was 3 on 3 but all our players went for the ball, if two or even just one had stayed on the ground we may have been able to break. This is what was happening last year.

As it is, we kick it out and it comes straight back in with our defence all scrambling and free men everywhere. Even my missus, who knows nothing about football was saying, "what is the point of kicking it there, they never get the ball". That is definitely at least one area that needs improving, and there are a lot of areas

[The Big Cat]

Ah, here we go again. It's a wonder that the "How Long Longmire?" thread hasn't resurfaced. The bald reality is that with the injuries we've had it is an amazing effort that we even made the top four. The truth is the new kids have been able to hold the fort against the mediocre teams but the big guns show up the inexperience and put pressure on the older guys who have busted a gut to keep us competitive and are now feeling the effects. If by some twist of fate we get through to face Hawthorn again I wouldn't bet against us knocking them off. They tend to choke a bit when there's no second chance and those pretty little kicks don't always hit their targets, plus they play through Franklin a lot and his kicking is dodgy.

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Funny isn't it. We end up with three talls, having blown the entire recruiting budget on one of them, where can really only play two.

Strange that most everyone on here has reached the same conclusion - albeit one which is the opposite of the coaching staff

I know who I'd back!