Fifteen points and too much crab football put us out of the winning habit .
Fifteen points and too much crab football put us out of the winning habit .
It's not the size of the man but the size of the heart. You don't have to be a big man to make a tackle stick or take a contested mark. You just need to be willing to commit to the contest and have some footy smarts.
Besides Hayward made 7 tackles, 2nd highest swan and 3rd most pressure acts on the ground. He had a crack.
I found it interesting looking at some of the stats. Buddy spent 122min on the ground. Assume he didn't come off much, if at all. But
Rohan - 76min
KJ - 87
Jones - 90
Towers - 90
Hannebery - 94
Hewett - 94
So Rohan was brought back as another marking target up forward but played 2/3rds a game. Towers is useful in forward 50 as well but reduced time on ground. And when our midfield was well beaten, Jones, KJ, Hannas and Hewett all had limited time on the ground. Are they not fit? Or did we get our rotations wrong?
OH my goodness...that was an incredibly frustrating and hard game to watch. Just home from the SCG and my blood is still boiling. Some thoughts...
* Our midfield...so lauded and yet our big names are seriously out of touch. JPK, Hanners, Parker, Jack just having next to no impact around the ball. After the Crows 'B Grade mids' ripped us a good one, I shudder what may happen at the Cattery next week.
* The coaching - to continually allow Crows to have 3-5 loose men in our forward line up until final 5 minutes was baffling. The number of times we kicked to an outnumbered contest was disgraceful.
* Missing Naismith and Reid really showed tonight....we do not have a marking option for the quick get out of trouble kick long down the line, someone to at least bring the ball to ground. When Naismith was rucking, Sinclair could provide that role but currently as the sole ruckman he is too busy and puffed chasing his man all around the field. I thought Allir last week actually provided the 'get out' option quite well and yet dropped tonight. We also need another lead up forward desperately...is McCartin ready for a debut? Something needs to change.
* Lastly the umpires...so consistently inconsistent it was abysmal. Same 2 out of the 3 umps that poorly umpired the Swans v Port game too. Free kicks paid to Crows were not paid to the Swans. 4-5 goals for them from direct free kicks. Nothing ever changes here so why am I surprised??
Now onto next week, the Cattery. This will go two ways...either a fighting, back to wall 6 point win or we'll lose by 10 goals. Nothing in between.
Swannies for life!
Yes, but how many effective tackles! Sure, individually they are all good players and each has their good moments during the game but collectively the team is unbalanced. Kicking out of defence down the line you have Isaac Heeney flying above the pack taking marks. The others are just pushed out of the contest, just like at centre bounces.
Exactly. At least Aliir last week was making some contests and taking a bit of pressure of Buddy. Strange that we tried that for one game and then dumped him. Tonight was a succession of bombing it long to a Buddy outnumbered 2 or 3 to one. He's not even a high making forward. Dumb stuff, but few other options. No structure up there.
Buddy should be free to roam and do his thing, not try to pluck an unlikely mark from a pack. That's not his thing.
Horse out coached and mids destroyed. The scoreline flatters us.
I cannot believe how many times we kicked long down the line from our defensive 50 to a contest (which we lost).
They seemed to have no problem moving the ball except in the third quarter when we put some pressure on.
Josh Francou just moved from the Swans to the Crows. I wonder how much inside information he took with him? Otherwise how else do you explain the complete shellacking our mids received? I didn�t realise how badly they were beaten AND Sinkers did ok in the ruck.
If we continue to play and move the ball like that, this year is a write off.
Maybe it�s time for the annual truth session�? Amongst the players? I�m not convinced that Longmire is the man for the job?
I don't know how the AFL Player Ratings work, but Gary Rohan was our highest rated player for the game, followed by Heeney, McVeigh, Jones, Lloyd, Towers and Cunningham.
The lowest rated was Hayward, followed by Papley, JPK, Reg and Hanners.
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