Alex Johnson & Hanners were in the stands with Will Hayward watching the game. Post match, they were seen in the rooms embracing Kieran Jack on his 250th. Heart warming.Originally Posted by stevoswan
Alex Johnson & Hanners were in the stands with Will Hayward watching the game. Post match, they were seen in the rooms embracing Kieran Jack on his 250th. Heart warming.
I missed that.....that's great.
Don't you mean his bucks night, not this wedding?
Funny how players seem to thrive away from our club. Rohan, Mitchell, Nankervis, etc. That's pretty damning for our culture or coaching staff.
IMO Ratten is the best non-senior coach in the game. The Carlton management treated him like crap.
Another one who has done pretty well since leaving us is Membrey at St Kilda. We received absolutely nothing in return for him too.
I think that the common thread with Nankervis, Membrey and Newman was lack of senior opportunities at the time at the Swans. I might add that Bruest at Hawthorn was on our rookie list at one point.
I think that Rohan is getting many more opportunities and service at Geong than he received as a forward in recent times at the Swans. It's hard to get a look in as a forward at the Swans when it hardly gets down there and when it does it's just a rushed kick under pressure.
Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
Breust was never on our rookie list. He played as a regular top-up player with our reserves team (then in the Canberra league) and was a stand-out performer. His residence qualified him to be taken as a priority rookie selection and many of us were flabbergasted at the time that he wasn't selected.
It is possible that he declined selection as a priority pick, as players were entitled to do. Matt Suckling was one player who I believe the Swans were keen to pick as a priority rookie but who declined, preferring instead to back his chances of being picked up by a Melbourne based club. I've never heard that Breust declined to be selected by the Swans. I recall the OTC team once quizzing Roos about why the club didn't select him, and him mumbling something about them thinking he was too small, or too slow, and then quickly changing the subject. If so (and Breust didn't decline), he was certainly a bad miss, and a surprising one given how much better he was than other top-ups we did then draft. It wasn't until Lloyd Perris came along that another top-up player looked quite as comfortable, and was such a strong contributor as an underaged top up.
No he didn't decline an invitation, we simply overlooked him for the reasons you indicated
Following all the comment and debate here about Rohan and his "walking on eggshells" remark is an article that provides more illumination about what he meant: https://www.smh.com.au/sport/afl/mr-...27-p51hrp.html.
Among other things Gazza said:
"I feel more free. At Sydney I felt I was more down as a pressure forward so I would put myself in spots where I probably wouldn't get the ball. I would get in a more defensive spot.... Here I want the ball in my hands and I am enjoying it."
To me this implies that his role at Geelong has allowed him more freedom and opens us up to question whether we should have limited his role in the way we seemingly did. On the one hand it's easy to say we got it wrong - because it's working so well for him at Geelong and we all like goals. On the other hand our game style is different and perhaps we/Horse place a greater premium on defensive pressure and not for nothing have we had one of the best defensive records for the past several years. We are a really hard team to score against. It's hard to evaluate what the Cats are sacrificing by giving Rohan more freedom. Anyway, hopefully Horse and the other coaches (especially Stevie J) will see what is happening with Rohan at Geelong and reflect on our approach and whether we think it can be improved (albeit with other players now that Rohan is gone).
I do feel sad that we didn't get to see more of Rohan using his great talent offensively. I tend to feel we did make a mistake by limiting him to a primarily defensive focus.... but what would I know?
If this is true then he was badly managed at the Swans and we deserved what we got from him. Who in their right mind would force the fastest player in the league to have a defensive mindset and play predominately defensively?
I get that when the opposition has the ball, we need him to be defensive and that his pace could be used to great effect in regard to forward defensive pressure....but when we are in possession of the ball, offense becomes the object and his focus should have been to attack and get away from his opponent, lead to the ball and grab that mark as he is doing at Geelong now, not to have a defensive mindset and worry about where his opponent is. His opponent should be worrying about where he is because we have the ball and Gary should have been doing his own thing and using his pace to leave his opponent and get to the ball, or to get to a position where he could present to receive it.
It's basic stuff.....maybe the message wasn't being conveyed to him effectively at the Swans because he certainly seems to understand his role at the Cattery much better than he understood his role with us....because what we are now seeing him do at Geelong is what we craved for during all the years he was a Swan.
This question has to be asked......Did the Swans coaching strategy effectively dilute or even waste Gary Rohan's talent?
I'm thinking YES it did....
Last edited by stevoswan; 29th April 2019 at 03:23 PM.
The article talks volumes to how we are currently playing across the board -too many players seem overly worried about what the opposition is doing at the expense of hunting the ball. The Brett Kirk-style defensive mindset worked well in the past but I think the balance has tipped too far in that direction.
It does sound like we are trying to rectify that but lack of cattle and a confidence deficit is probably holding us back at the moment.
Gary is a joy to watch in full flight and for various reasons we didn't see enough of that here. It's great seeing him do well so far in his stint at the Cats.
Enough of the Monday Quarterback rubbish please. Gaz was tried as a leading forward and didn't cut the mustard. Most people on here called for his trade.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks