"You get the feeling that like Monty Python's Black Knight, the Swans would regard amputation as merely a flesh wound."
Your comment was that if a player was drafted as a rookie, it must mean they have poor skills and only players taken in the ND can be considered skillful. You get a much higher failure rate from rookie drafted players, but there are plenty of talented players on AFL lists that were promoted from rookie lists.
No skillset means the whole package, while a player could have very good agility, kicking, handballing, pace, good on the inside etc they may have for example terrible marking. Perfect example is Sinclair. His skillset is lacking. His marking is horrendous. It's these type of players that never get drafted high and you have to play them within their limitations. It's not that they don't have any skill it's that they lack in a certain area. isolate our backline one on one n it would more than likely get ripped apart week after week. Play them as a defensive unit with zoning and playing their role with the help from the midfield n you have a decent backline.
Lots of people talk about a Plan B - what do they want to see ? Our best is good but we have a young team and that level of intensity is hard to maintain especially if some of our best have bee struggling for whatever reason - if Hawthorn play keepings off and hit targets what are our players supposed to do ? We try to play that game and get bogged down because we miss targets the Hawks dont. We have to take our chances when they present and Friday night showed that under pressure we make mistakes thats footy with a young team - hardly the coaches fault
In my view in 2012 the Swans were nearing the end of a very successful period, and desperately needed to replenish the list, whereas hawks were a much younger and overall, a more superior outfit.
The older guys we moved on, Goodes, ROK, Malceski, Shaw, Bolton, LRT, Mattner, were all mainstays of our team, and some were truly special players. Hawthorn's list of 2014 or 2015 is probably closer to what we were facing in 2012. And Longmire has been integral in that seemless rebuilding process - he needs to see it through.
Against the Hawks in Rd 10, we fielded 11 players with 52 games or fewer, 4 in their first season in the ones. Our oldest players are 30 (Reg, Tippo and Buddy). The young guys are overrepresented in defence - so we will leak goals while they develop. It is part of the development process. To be frank, i think 2018 is the year we will start to see dividends from this team. Can't wait to see what Ollie, Paps, Newman, Jonesy (hope he stays) and Hayward produce when they have a few more games under the belt.
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I dont see why it is beyond us to play a hybrid of uncontested and contested footy ????
Hawthorn at their best could do both think of many a game where they have smashed us in the contest and uncontested
Swans at their best executed contested footy better then most but have not seen the light of slowing down the opposition by also using uncontested in a situation like Friday night
Starving the hawks style take them out of their comfort zone. They love to have the ball. Dont let them have it. Make them chase our kickers make the them scramble
It doesn't matter we disagree
I have made a call...I simply have drawn the line in the sand on our first half tactics........it was unacceptable to fall for the same trick so many times.......it could not believe my eyes !!
It ain't good enough
Two teams are out there and the strategy and execution by the hawks was superior first half.....yes we got it back on our terms but we spent all the gas in the tank to do that via contested style footy and a lack of personnel
What stopped us from adapting and surprising the hawks ?
Was it the players? No......they followed orders
Was it the game plan ? Yes
+1, 6 years later and still no plan B against the Hawks, by the way who do we have a horrible record against the Hawks. Smart coaches adapt and change even if its for one team. Horse just keeps going on the same path, that's why we need change, he simply isn't tactically astute enough to come to grips with the new game. He has been great for the club but its time!
Some on here think "it's time" for Horse to go.....it's not going to happen. It's a moot point. He's staying. We have a 'panel' of coaches....what are the others doing? I don't see Longmire as a "it's my way or the highway' sort of guy, so the assistants can't be offering many 'points of difference' then eh? It's a collective failure in the coaches box. Maybe "it's time" for some of the assistants to go.....
Maybe "it's time" for people to swallow a decent dose of realism and to accept that our slow start to the year was due to injuries to important players, not only to blokes unable to play but causing interrupted preseasons to others. (We would have surely beaten Collingwood, probably the dogs and the Eagles and perhaps the Power, all of whom we were on terms with and probably lacked the steadiness of the older hands in the final stages). The two weeks before we played Hawthorn we played slick, quick high scoring football (just the way people on RWO are advocating we play). I admit we played below our best in the first half on Friday night but played without our best ball winner for the entire game and our swingman for more than a half. Had the siren gone a couple of minutes early or Mills kicked that goal, people would have been lauding the team and the coaches for their never say die attitude.
Last edited by The Big Cat; 28th May 2017 at 11:21 PM.
Those who have the greatest power to hurt us are those we love.
Can we ask why the SCG was so wet when we're clearly a dry weather team? It was NOT a dewy night and there was no reason for the ground to be like it was unless it had been watered way beyond what it should have been. It reminded me of Nick Davis v Geelong in 2005.
Today's a draft of your epitaph
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