Originally Posted by
liz
It's not a fact - yet. He hasn't been able to so far this season. That's not enough evidence to confirm he's lost the ability for good. He's playing catch-up with his pre-season, after barely being able to train at all last year. After a while that takes its toll. It has to. He has been just a smidgeon slower this year, and he doesn't yet have the timing in his kicking but I'll back him to get it back.
As for the rest of the game/team, I thought our boys more than matched the very good midfield of Melbourne in the first half. We were wasteful in front of goal (and two goals we did get were from very soft - or non-existent -free kicks, while the Dees scored a few arsey ones to keep closer on the scoreboard than they should.
Clearly Melbourne were the better side in the second half and deserved their win in the end. Despite their poor start to the year, they are a pretty good side.
We can't know for sure, but I suspect part of the reason for the second half fade-out was fatigue, coming off a five day break. Five day breaks are pretty brutal on all sides. I'd be more concerned had we been shown up for skill/run in the first half and then staged a second half comeback, since it would be harder to attribute that to fatigue. Even the very poor skills in the second half were probably at least partly due to fatigue. Buddy looked shot towards the end. A couple of times the ball was loose in his zone and he just stood and watched it. That's very un-Buddy like.
There will always be complaints about selection, it seems. Sure, McInerney probably wasn't ready for a game, but I can guarantee there would have been lots of moaning had Rose been selected instead. Or Clarke. And it's likely that Rowbottom wouldn't have fared any better than McInerney. He was actually a lot better than a one-possession game suggests. There were a few times he cracked in and made a contest when it looked like the Dees were about to swoop away with the ball. I hope he gets one more go next week since there isn't really a ready player knocking down the door (if you exclude our NEAFL stand-out in Rose). Even if he doesn't do much more than he did today, he'll be better for the experience and I hate players getting dropped after just one game unless there's an experienced player returning from injury who pushes them out.
Blakey isn't yet able to contribute much during a game, but it's great getting glimpses of what he can do. That contest where he won himself a free kick, sandwiched between two Dees players, but didn't need it because he won the ball cleanly once it hit the deck was pretty impressive.
I really liked Dawson's first half. He finally started to look as if he believed he belongs. He faded in the second half, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Heeney was another who was quietish in the second half, but early on he looked like he was going to tear the game apart. I wonder how much effect that (blatant in the back) tackle towards the end of the first half had on him. He was very slow to get up and must have been sore after it.
I thought Aliir was one of our shining lights. Ludwig reckons he's better value playing loose, but he's providing a lot of value as a close checking defender. Sure, he was beaten in a few contests, but he won far more than he lost. And he made ONE really bad disposal blue during the game. I doubt there were any team mates who made fewer. Rampe, possibly.
I thought Jack was really lively. He's unlikely to ever recapture his form of a few years ago, but he offered a lot tonight. If this is to be his last season, I hope he can make it a good one.
Mills was uncharacteristically poor overhead tonight, but last week he was one of our best. Maybe he's realised that if he's ever going to get a go in the midfield he needs to stop playing well in defence. Sadly, with McVeigh out, his chances of an imminent move have probably taken a dive.
Parker is a bit of a puzzle. He's one of the few we have in the middle with oodles of experience (along with Kennedy) but he's only played one really good quarter so far this season. We need him to refind his mojo and give a bit of support to Kennedy if we're to become more competitive this year. If he's carrying something of an injury, maybe he should be spending more time in the forward line to release Heeney to play further up the ground (assuming Heeney is fully over his ankle issue - last week he certainly seemed to be).
A few posters have bemoaned that "this is going to be a long year". That depends entirely on how you view this season. We've been utterly spoilt as Swans fans for more than a decade, expecting our team to qualify for the finals. I certainly hope the team has improvement in it this year but if we don't make the finals, it's not the end of the world. It's not like we have a team of ageing journeymen out there, performing poorly. Rather, we have a team with a lot of young and youngish players and I'm willing to be patient and enjoy watching them develop as the year goes on, even if the results aren't always as we'd like.
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