It'll be very interesting to see whether the NEAFL granny will be the making of James, such unfamiliar but welcome intensity was exhibited. Or whether he'll just drift off
It'll be very interesting to see whether the NEAFL granny will be the making of James, such unfamiliar but welcome intensity was exhibited. Or whether he'll just drift off
Loose translation from the Latin is - I am tall, so I hit out.
My hope is that this thread does not turn into a 'Hanners' put down.
I loved him when he was a Swan and will still take an interest in how he plays now he is a Saint and am sorry he has issues already.
Hope all our players get through the pre-season un-impeded.
I've moved the posts about Hannebery to the thread discussing past players so this thread can focus on the Swans' pre-season.Originally Posted by YvonneH
Swans chat Past players - what are they up to?
From this article: Your say: What should be your coach's New Year's resolution? - AFL.com.au
.......comes this:
To maintain a balance between youth and experience in the forward line, to lift the dismal levels of scoring and relieve the pressure off Buddy.
- Josh Callaway, Greenwich NSW
I will not play injured players. I will not allow injured players to play, even if they say they can.
- Joel Paterson, St Andrews NSW
To develop more run and carry through half-back and to have a multi-faceted (not Buddy-dependent) forward line. To not bring Blakey in too early from the NEAFL, and to respond more quickly within a game with a plan B when plan A is not working.
- Greg Jewson, North Curl Curl NSW
.....and they're all spot on. The fans can see it, now let's hope Horse can see it too......
Except they're not. In the main they are simplistic, or asking for things beyond the coaches' control.
If the Swans never played an injured player, how many games would Buddy have played in 2018? One or two, maybe? And while there were games where his injury didn't allow him to contribute, there were others where we simply wouldn't have won without him out there, despite never being truly fit all season. If the club's aim was to gain access to Lukosis or Walsh, that might have been a decent approach. But I'm glad that's not typically the Swans' approach.
Balancing youth and experience in the forward line sound like a great idea. But in practical terms it translates to forbidding players getting injured. If Reid and Naismith (or Tippett) hadn't been injured all year, there might have been experienced options to play up forward (with Naismith freeing up Sinclair). As far as I know, forbidding players from getting injured is yet to work for an AFL club, no matter how hard they try.
The Plan A and Plan B has been done to death already.
I don't have any claim to footy expertise, I've never played the game, and I rely pretty much on what I see, on selected journos, and RWO. Making allowances for that, I have come to think that the Plan A to Plan B stuff is not going to work. With the Swans - and other clubs as far as I can see - there is no Plan B in the sense of a different way of approaching the game, there are only the options of which players go in which positions. For instance, when Gaz was sent to full forward in the goal mouth against Essendon, or Isaac Heeney gets moved temporarily into defence, or Buddy gets a run in the middle, and so on.
So I'm thinking that it's a good thing to have players who can all function in various positions, and the more the merrier; indeed I think we want that kind of versatility from everyone, from the old warriors down to the rawest recruits. If Plan B means a different style of footy, I doubt it can happen. And I don't mean to criticise innovations like slingshot (what a masterpiece that was, and at times still is), because we can introduce changes of that ilk and revamp our style. The one thing I'd like to see is an emphasis on more accurate kicking; if we could do that more often we would improve our basic style out of sight.
He reminds him of the guys, close-set, slow, and never rattled, who were play-makers on the team. (John Updike, seeing Josh Kennedy in a crystal ball)
Buddy doesn't count among mere mortals.....he is a freak. I think those 'wishes' are made in 'a perfect world' (with no injuries)....which we all wish for.
It has to be said, if the club does achieve the above 'goals', we will go a long way this season.
As for Plan A and Plan B, sure it's been done to death but strangely it still hasn't been successfully achieved by our team.....and this is totally Horse's responsibility and has little to do with injuries......all the players either buy in or they don't, whether they are experienced or not.....if indeed there is an alternative gameplan. I still don't think any Swans fans can identify if a Plan B actually exists.....except maybe 'play Plan A harder'.
‘Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?’ ..... sigh!
I think playing with Buddy struggling is one of the biggest challenges for the team. If you look over the last few seasons, we've generally done OK when Buddy has been out injured. Not great, but OK. In 2018 we beat Geelong in Geelong and Hawthorn at the MCG, and narrowly lost to Hawthorn at the SCG. We also lost narrowly to North at the SCG in probably the most frustrating, over-umpired game I saw last year, where both teams struggled to get going (Higgins aside).Buddy doesn't count among mere mortals.....he is a freak. I think those 'wishes' are made in 'a perfect world' (with no injuries)....which we all wish for
It has to be said, if the club does achieve the above 'goals', we will go a long way this season.
As for Plan A and Plan B, sure it's been done to death but strangely it still hasn't been successfully achieved by our team.....and this is totally Horse's responsibility and has little to do with injuries......all the players either buy in or they don't, whether they are experienced or not.....if indeed there is an alternative gameplan. I still don't think any Swans fans can identify if a Plan B actually exists.....except maybe 'play Plan A harder'.
When he plays and plays even decently well, we are usually in the match.
But some of our most disappointing performances have come when he's been in the team but unable - due to injury - to perform to anything like his normal standard. Think of the 2018 and 2017 finals exit games against GWS and Geelong respectively. He had a groin injury in the former and a massive thigh cork in the latter (which he picked up the previous week and you could see badly hampered him during that game). Or the Essendon game this year. You could even throw the 2016 Grand Final into the discussion, where he hurt his ankle in the first few minutes and could barely run for the rest of the game. For all the commentary on the umpiring in that game, and the injury to Hanners, and the fact the team took a few not-quite-ready players into the game, I still reckon we would have overcome all that had Franklin been able to perform.
The fact he often performs when not really fit shows how difficult a selection decision it is for the club. I'm not advocating him being picked less often when not fully fit. But I do think the team (and Buddy) need to adjust during games when he's out there but not performing. I think the coaches get tactically more adventurous when he's not there - as we saw during this year's Geelong game when they tried something different in the final quarter and it worked out. But when he is out there, there often seems to be a belief that he'll pull something out of the bag even when he's struggling. It may be that it's Buddy that needs to adjust as much as the coaches, and learn to play more sacrificial roles to open up space and opportunities for other players.
As for the Plan B versus Plan A discussion, I will go further than you. I don't think most people know what Plan A is. Or rather, they confuse poor execution with how the team is trying to play. Anyone who suggests the team should try to play less in its back half is prime example. No team tries to play in its back half. That's just dumb. In an ideal game, the team wins every centre bounce clearance, gets the ball forward, and either scores, or locks in forward until they score. Unfortunately there's always another team out there trying to doing the same and it gets in the way of a team executing its perfect plan.
Liz, I think your comment about playing in the back half completely misses the point.
The question with game style is where teams try to win the ball back when they don’t have it.
Richmond and others try to win the ball back in their forward half so they don’t have to defend a mountain of inside 50s.
The Swans tend to end up trying to win the ball back in their defensive half.
Which means more inside 50s and having to move the ball further to score.
The Age says this should be our New Years resolution:
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/...25-p50o5l.html
Sydney: Stop flogging dead Horse tactics
The Swans’ sagging defence, where they absorb repeat inside-50s and attempt to slingshot forward on the counter attack, is no longer working.
The old hands down back, including Heath Grundy and Nick Smith, aren’t able to intercept the way they did several years ago.
For the Swans to continue their nine-year finals streak, John Longmire needs to start playing the game in the Swans' forward half, lessening pressure on his backline and allowing Lance Franklin to spend more time in the orbit of the Sherrin.
It was partly that Age article I had in mind when I made the comment. As before, there's a difference between trying and succeeding.
If you look back to recent seasons past (ie before 2018) when we had a pretty good midfield and a more experienced forward line, our forward and midfield pressure was pretty good. When the ball got into our defence it did often stay there for a while (leading to comments that the Swans were good at absorbing pressure in their defence) but I believe this was more because we weren't very good at rebounding the ball quickly out of our defence, rather than because it got there a lot. The Swans have recognised that they lack rebound out of defence and have addressed this in the draft in recent seasons. But the players they've drafted aren't yet ready to make an impact.
In 2018 our midfield was a liability. Neither Parker nor Kennedy was at their best, Hanners was a shadow of his former self (when out there, and, IMO, worse than in 2017, when out there), Jack continued his gradual decline, and we had a lot of light bodies who couldn't make their tackles stick. Our forward line pressure was also down on prior years, partly related to the midfield decline (since midfielders usually contribute to the forward press), partly because Buddy's fitness was patchy (his defensive play is underrated by many) and Rohan's absence didn't help either. I know Rohan has never got high disposal statistics but he was pretty good at cutting off opposition forward exits via his positioning and ability to run quickly to certain spots on the ground.
I'm not suggesting that things don't need to change. More challenging this belief that it's part of Longmire's philosophy on how to play the game that we should just allow the ball to get to defence and bank on winning it back there. Prior years' patterns of play under his tutelage don't support this.
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