Now let's be entirely honest....

[Nico]

I think we have 3 problems that are causing us not to go to another level.

1. Our centre clearance work is appalling which allows a high % of these contests to go quickly into the opposing forward line. This it turn puts constant pressure on the backline to clear the ball. Because of the forward press game it makes this even more difficult. The opposition knows this a glaring weakness of ours and we get exploited every week.

This is compunded by:

2. We don't have any run from the backline anymore which was a hallmark of our games for many years.

Kennelly is being coralled into making mistakes, Richards, LRT and Grundy are not quick, Shaw is playing a stopping role, Malceski is clearly not right and struggling and Johnson is very much in the mould of Grundy in his playing style. Mattner seems to have forgotten how to run in a straight line and is now adopting the Leo Barry shimmy style and stuffing up.

So we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to move the footy around to find a way out. We end up getting into numerous stoppages down back, over possess and finally turn it over.

When we do get free no.3 comes into play.

3. Our midfield apart from Jack is slow and really have limited kicking penetration. So Kennedy, Hanners, Bird and Bolton get the ball and kick it 20 to 30 metres and the opposition have all the time in the world to get back and out number our forwards. You can't fault their effort but all the disposals under the sun have limited value unless you use them to advantage. In other words we slaughter the footy.

Summing up; we don't get the ball into the forward line quick enough to allow our forwards to catch their defenders off guard or out of position.

[liz]

I wonder whether you were more correct the other day when you talked about the cream Liz. Apart from Goodes and possibly mal and marty when we have players streaming forward with the ball you just wonder whether they are actually good enough to hurt their opponent. When you watch marc murphy (or judd or scotland) or luke hodge (or young or ellis) or brendan goddard or ryan griffin come forward with the ball you can be confident that they will either kick the goal or if a forward has a yard or two on the defender that the ball will hit the forward lace out. We really dont have anyone who can consistently hurt you.

I have hopes for jetta around this because he actually is an incredibly penetrating kick but in the absence of the cream we really have to hit the ball to contest to contest and hope to make the most of it when it gets there.

I think it is partly the cream that creates the confidence in the rest. Most teams only have 5-6 players who really count as cream. The draft and salary cap conspire to prevent a club building up much more than that. But those players, fit and in form, and a game plan that the whole team understands and believes in, can make the next level down look a whole heap better. And their confidence in the stars has to be a large part of that. Look at what happened to West Coast when they lost Judd and Cousins (but still had Kerr, before his injuries got really bad, Cox, Embley, Glass etc). They became an abomination. And now look at them with a creditable game plan, plus Kerr and Glass back to full fitness, Naitanui, Le Cras, Kennedy, an improved Hurn and the rest pretty much the same squad as they had last year.

I think the point I was trying to make is that although we're not good enough at the moment, and don't have sufficient cream, it is not like we have to discover a dozen superstars before we can compete with the best teams. We just need a handful, plus steady improvement from a few others, and improved confidence levels may take us the rest of the way.

[Melbournehammer]

A very pertinent comment IMO. Once a team reaches a certain standard, confidence becomes an ingredient that creates a cycle of further improvement. Maybe the team doesn't yet have that confidence because it isn't quite good enough yet. But just a small increase in actual ability can lead to a marked increase in actual performance once that confidence kicks in. West Coast and Carlton are great illustrations of that in 2011.



It varies from player to player. Smith and Jack probably both looked out of their depth in their first couple of senior games. But by the start of the following season they had pretty much established themselves as senior players. Johnson and Hanners seemed to settle in almost immediately. Reid is a harder one to assess because he did have a full pre-season after his first game.

We just need to hope that the likes of Sumner, Johnston, Nipper and Parker use their senior exposure this year to launch their careers from 2012 onwards. It would be nice to see them each get another couple of senior games this season to give them more idea of what to work on over the summer.

I wonder whether you were more correct the other day when you talked about the cream Liz. Apart from Goodes and possibly mal and marty when we have players streaming forward with the ball you just wonder whether they are actually good enough to hurt their opponent. When you watch marc murphy (or judd or scotland) or luke hodge (or young or ellis) or brendan goddard or ryan griffin come forward with the ball you can be confident that they will either kick the goal or if a forward has a yard or two on the defender that the ball will hit the forward lace out. We really dont have anyone who can consistently hurt you.

I have hopes for jetta around this because he actually is an incredibly penetrating kick but in the absence of the cream we really have to hit the ball to contest to contest and hope to make the most of it when it gets there.

[Bas]

True - so he's a rugby league to rugby to AFL convert..... He's doing ok so far if I may say so too....

He only played in France so he could do the commercials.

To call Hunt a rugby player is like comparing his short season in rugby in France to Dermott Brereton being remembered as a Sydney Swan.

[jono2707]

.....who had a season of Rugby in France immediately before coming to the Suns.

True - so he's a rugby league to rugby to AFL convert..... He's doing ok so far if I may say so too....

[Triple B]

Just a minor point but Karmichael is a rugby league convert...

.....who had a season of Rugby in France immediately before coming to the Suns.

[jono2707]

By the time you reach AFL you really shouldnt need to be taught how to execute simple skills.With the exception being the rugby or overseas convert's.

Id have more faith in Karmichael Hunt or Pykey running into an open goal than i would in White or LRT.

Just a minor point but Karmichael is a rugby league convert...

[On-Baller]

I can explain this...somewhat anyway.

Swans play a stoppage heavy style. In seasons past from a stoppage we would use quick hand passes to find someone on the outside moving forward to TRY and hit a target while moving in the clear.

This year it seems this has changed. Now players pick the ball up in the middle of traffic and heave the ball forward - kicking high across the body. Very low percentage. O'Keefe, Kennedy and Mattner are all major offenders. No doubt the game plan has changed (and it may be due to the tightening of the HTB rule), but it stops us controlling the ball - leading to more and more pressure situations.

Yeah your spot on,but even when we do manage to get it to an outside guy they 9 times out of ten butcher the ball.

It staggers me guys can be payed to do a job of kicking a bit of leather but somehow complicate it so much.

As i said earlier if people in other fields did their job so haphazardly they'd get the boot or at least be re-trained or given a good bollocking and told to fix the problem quick smart.

By the time you reach AFL you really shouldnt need to be taught how to execute simple skills.With the exception being the rugby or overseas convert's.

Id have more faith in Karmichael Hunt or Pykey running into an open goal than i would in White or LRT.

[Bloody Hell]

Our skills is what loses us games,last night on One week at a time they showed a stat that puts us 16th in goalkicking and 16th in kicking in the midfield.

I can explain this...somewhat anyway.

Swans play a stoppage heavy style. In seasons past from a stoppage we would use quick hand passes to find someone on the outside moving forward to TRY and hit a target while moving in the clear.

This year it seems this has changed. Now players pick the ball up in the middle of traffic and heave the ball forward - kicking high across the body. Very low percentage. O'Keefe, Kennedy and Mattner are all major offenders. No doubt the game plan has changed (and it may be due to the tightening of the HTB rule), but it stops us controlling the ball - leading to more and more pressure situations.

[Mr Magoo]

Here was the AFL Ladder after rnd 14 last year :

AFL Ladder: After 2010 Round 14
Position Team M W D L For Agst %age Points
1 Geelong 14 11 0 3 1639 1095 149.68% 44
2 St Kilda 14 11 0 3 1224 952 128.57% 44
3 Collingwood 14 10 1 3 1494 1127 132.56% 42
4 Fremantle 14 10 0 4 1481 1212 122.19% 40
5 Wstn Bulldogs 14 8 0 6 1366 1075 127.07% 32
6 Carlton 14 8 0 6 1380 1208 114.24% 32
7 Hawthorn 14 8 0 6 1235 1199 103.00% 32
8 Sydney 14 7 0 7 1239 1163 106.53% 28
9 Nth Melbourne 14 7 0 7 1172 1424 82.30% 28
10 Adelaide 14 5 0 9 1150 1275 90.20% 20
11 Brisbane 14 5 0 9 1209 1417 85.32% 20
12 Essendon 14 5 0 9 1214 1441 84.25% 20
13 Port Adelaide 14 5 0 9 1091 1376 79.29% 20
14 Melbourne 14 4 1 9 1081 1249 86.55% 18
15 Richmond 14 4 0 10 1063 1455 73.06% 16
16 West Coast 14 3 0 11 1091 1461 74.67% 12

In our seven losses we had lost to Saints, Geelong, Dogs, freo, hawks, pies and richmond (in a shocker).

Purely on that basis we are half a game better off than this time last year with plenty of up side if we improve our kicking and forward structure.

We also have a better run home on paper with only Geelong and freo above us on the ladder and freo is at home with them sufferring from a terrible run of injuries.

Glass is half full.

(I still reserve my right to throw things at the tv when we get insipid results like the adelaide game)

[Matimbo]

Our skills is what loses us games,last night on One week at a time they showed a stat that puts us 16th in goalkicking and 16th in kicking in the midfield.

Spot on.

While I do agree with various calls to move Goodes back to midfield and drop Jetta and some other options, the plain fact is our goal-kicking inaccuracy lost us the Crows game. We also kicked 11.18 against Demons for a draw in Rd 1 (so did they). These are the 2 games we absolutely should have won and would have had us on 36 points now, level with Weagles and one game outside the top 4. We also kicked poorly in a couple of other games but still won them ... Bulldogs in Manuka (10.13 vs. their 10.5) and Tigers at SCG (9.21 v.s their 9.11).

However, if you look at the other 5 games we've lost this season, they were all against the top 4 ... Carlton twice, Cats, Pies, Hawks = 5 losses. In all of these, IMO it was our poor disposal under pressure that was the key reason we can't match it with these teams. If you look at the games scores for each, even with better goal-kicking accuracy we still would not have won most of them. In at least 3 of them, our opponent also were poor in front of goal. The solution is better midfield/halfback line disposal in the short term (skills focus NOW) plus more speed in the midfield longer term (recruiting focus).

[liz]

4. For all its culture, our team does not yet truly believe it is a contender. Deep down against the best teams they dont seem to have that overriding condfidence that they have the goods to beat the top teams.

A very pertinent comment IMO. Once a team reaches a certain standard, confidence becomes an ingredient that creates a cycle of further improvement. Maybe the team doesn't yet have that confidence because it isn't quite good enough yet. But just a small increase in actual ability can lead to a marked increase in actual performance once that confidence kicks in. West Coast and Carlton are great illustrations of that in 2011.

Are any of the reserves players the answer - I doubt it. None of them have come in apart from reid and really shown a propensity to dominate at senior level. Maybe this is a maturity thing and maybe its a confidence thing but these guys need to look at how reid , johnson ,hannebery (and even smith before that ) go about it. All have looked to be confident and valuable contributors from the moment they entered senior football.

It varies from player to player. Smith and Jack probably both looked out of their depth in their first couple of senior games. But by the start of the following season they had pretty much established themselves as senior players. Johnson and Hanners seemed to settle in almost immediately. Reid is a harder one to assess because he did have a full pre-season after his first game.

We just need to hope that the likes of Sumner, Johnston, Nipper and Parker use their senior exposure this year to launch their careers from 2012 onwards. It would be nice to see them each get another couple of senior games this season to give them more idea of what to work on over the summer.

[On-Baller]

Our skills is what loses us games,last night on One week at a time they showed a stat that puts us 16th in goalkicking and 16th in kicking in the midfield.

So a group of kids up in the gold coast have better skills than our side,absolute disgrace,these guys get payed to kick a ball,its not rocket science,if any of us were so hap hazard at our own jobs we'd be sacked.

[Kanga]

It is ironic that poor kicking from Collingwood keeps the Swans in the game one week and the next Swans poor kicking keeps the Crows in the game.

[wolftone57]

I think one of our major problems is the negitive game plan. The attacking footy we played for most of last year seems to have disappeared only to be replaced with the Rodney Eade/Grant Thomas style of negaty (keep the ball in packs and scramble it). Our new players are not suited to this style & what's more it is so outdated & easily overcome. There is an attacking plan that comes out occassionally but not often enough. There is no comprehensive plan for wet weather from what I have seen this year. "We handballed too much in the first half & then kicked too much in the second" said John Longmire, that tells me there was no comprehensive structural plan developed for wet weather games. John Kennedy had a most comprehensive approach to wet weather "Kick the bloody thing, kick it off the ground, kick it in the air but keep it low, do not bomb it under any circumstance"

I think players like Reid, AJ, Hannas. Smithie, Parker etc are coming along nicely. There are several others in the resies such as Sumner, LJ, Murphy (for next years draft), Nipper, McNiel etc all developing nicely & before being injured Lamb & Harren. These are exciting times so don't despair the cattle are there but you are right about this year we p have come back to reality with a thud. We don't handle the wet & that is really bad as quite a few matches from now on will probably be played in the wet in Melb.

I am not so sure of our coaching panel though. Too slow to make important decissions like moving players when they are being killed. Negative game plan! Nothing new! Haven't developed anything exciting even though the list is capable of excitement as we saw in the preseason & late last year. The goal kicking coach must be a dud, please get Davis to come back & teach them how to do it. The forward Coach ditto!