Was inspiring to see Kizza's anger and disappointment in the post-match video. Here's hoping the team can bottle that and drive them to a win next week.
Not a good time to be turning crap.
Hope they remember next week that we wear red & white and that you should pass/kick the ball to someone wearing that colour too.
Wild speculation, unsubstantiated rumours, silly jokes and opposition delight in another's failures is what makes an internet forum fun.
Blessed are the cracked for they are the ones who let in the light.
You have to wonder whether Ross Lyon has outsmarted everyone by resting half his team in round 23 v Saints. He is a ruthless winner. The Dockers fans must be thrilled with him. He had an injury list as bad as any team's during the season, and still managed squeeze the crap out of teams and come up a winner.
He had a very fresh looking team that overran the Cats in just about the toughest assignment in football, travelling from Perth to Geelong and playing the Cats at Simonds.
The Swans, on the other hand, played their hearts out in Round 23 in a meaningless game, faded early in the 4th quarter, only to repeat the performance in the final, except this time faded out one quarter sooner.
The heart says play sentimental favourites Bolton, Rohan and Jetta. But the performances say they are just not up to finals footy. I don't think Horse has the 'courage' to face the reality and drop them.
I don't know if it was our young blokes who stuffed up so much Gary. Jude & Benny 8 disposals, Benny 45% ineffective. Hannas had 13 and coughed it up nearly 50%. Ryano got 21 and wasted 43%. Mumford and Rohan had 3 disposals each. Jetta played the whole of the last for 4 possessions even though they were all effective clearly not enough. Everitt and Rampe wasted 45.5% and were the only playerswho have only been regulars this year to waste the ball but they at least had reason as they were always under pressure in the back half. You know we are in trouble when Reg gets 15 possessions at least he made them count. Teddy was well beaten too. We have been told the young ones let us down in the midfield. Parker got 26 at 80% efficiency and Mitchell did not get enough as a mid 15 he made them count 86%.
So who let us down? I would say most of our team both experienced and inexperienced let us down. We did not get enough ball. Even Macca wasted 40%. I am also getting sick and tired of Macca's sooking all the time when the ball doesn't come in as he would like. You make the best of what you have Macca. He is also playing for frees all the time, same with Mal. We are predictable and therefore the opposition can keep the ball off us by precision kicking. We do not man up either we play a zone, something I thought we had abandoned as sad for us. We play a high energy game and if we are not at peak fitness we will run out of legs quite quickly. Even other supporters have picked that one up why haven't John Longmire and coaches.
When I say we did not get enough ball here are the stats; Swans 315 disposals at 70.3% and Hawks 407 at 76.9%. The turnovers and long bombs (which are not seen as ineffective I might add even if the opposition takes the ball away) killed us, other than the fact we got too little ball. By the way Luke Hodge said they just waited out the first half to see if we would long bomb it to Tippett and the big guys and then arranged their game plan around that and just ran off us. My nephew is a Hawks fan and said that we are now really predictable and most sides know to leave heaps of players at the bottom of Tippett, Pyke, Mumford and White. He said that when we had Jesse leading in the last round we had them worried because we had changed the game plan and it was working.
It only takes one player to fall off the mark to get hammered by the Hawks, because with one man free they can cut you up with a chain of perfect passes, which is exactly what they did.
We know Jude can't keep up with the pace of the game anymore. It was sad to see such a talent like Rohan not being able to keep up with slower players. So many times he could have applied pressure deep in our forward line, but didn't seem up to the task. By the end, he was out-sprinted by David Hale who took a mark in front of him.
As Wolf and others have stated, players like McGlynn and Mumford had poor games, which didn't help. Hanners was hampered by injury.
We have now lost 3 in a row to Hawthorn. One thing we know: The current formula cannot beat them. What do we have to lose by playing our fittest team, even if less experienced?
I agree Ludwig. I am also very upset with Longmire going to press and stating that we have misinterpreted the depth at the Swans and maybe our depth is not that good. I think he missed the point by blaming the younger or fringe players. Our experienced players really did not perform that well either. It is also really problematic that a coach comes out and singles a group of players out for criticism when his pets are not playing well either and he stuffed up by playing unfit players. Targeting young players is a thing other clubs do NOT US so if he insists on doing this hwe should leave now. After all he seems incapable of changing his game plan mid match. There is an old saying "A bad tradesman blames his tools".
It was Longmire's game plan that let the players down and his insistence on playing unfit players who had no hope of instituting that game plan due to its demands on the body.
Question to John Longmire: Is your ego so fragile that you have to blame everybody but yourself for the failures of the Swans? Everything I can see and am hearing from coaches and players points to your game plan being predictable and too taxing.
I was pretty good on Friday.
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