Match Day SEMI FINAL Geelong v Sydney MCG 7.50pm Friday 15 September

[Hotpotato]

and he wore Capper shorts, restricting him even more.
Should have worn flappy Eddie Betts shorts .

[O'Reilly Boy]

We set a record unlikely to be broken by making finals after 0-6. We faced a Geelong team playing for its reputation. On the rebound, top four sides that lose the qualifying final have a massive record in the semi. We got hammered around the contest and when we did get the ball, turned it over time after time through fumbling and poor decisions. Last year we had a very poor game against GWS. We had no second chance this year. We are a very good team who looked tired, flat and a bit listless. It can happen in a one off game. To turn on players, coaches etc may be cathartic but is irrational. I am sure the club will analyse the year and make adjustments. Geelong's game plan worked last night and credit to them but we just didn't get our hand on the ball often enough and their pressure and energy was greater. Statistically, we were due for a bad one. Unfortunately, we had no second chance. Still rather be a Swan supporter- the team gave us a great ride considering everything.

+1.

Buddy probably shouldn't have been playing: he only seemed to get beyond a trot once or twice, and their backs were running off him too easily, which set up their kick to kick across half back?when our boys are on song they seem to be able to corrall opposition deep into pockets to force the kick down the line to a contest. That just didn't happen last night. And I wonder about what other players were carrying into the game. Heeney is clearly running on fumes after the glandular fever. Naismith seemed to be getting his hands on the ball in the rucks, but our clearances were bombed away wastefully (shades of the Ryan O'Keefe blasts of yesteryear). Just felt like a perfect storm: mids not hard enough and half a pace behind a motivated opposition, therefore no supply to outside runners; backs rattled early and umpired out of contests; no forward defensive pressure so Cats able to clear danger area and control the ball from half back. And credit to Geelong, who executed and sustained a game plan no-one thought that they had the skills, ticker or discipline to execute.
Really disappointing, but what a ride 2017 has been: some of my favourite days at the footy since I became a member in 1999.
I'm also very interested to hear from those with a better understanding of the game think that 'Plan B' should be against the Clarkson short lateral kick/keeping off game? everyone is complaining about not having a Plan B, so what should it be? Shuffling an extra behind the ball seems to be about it, but I wanted that extra to fill the space in front of Dangerfield, which didn't seem to happen.

[Hotpotato]

With a door mat strapped to his leg, Buddy was totally unbalanced.
Tippo was in better shape .

[Blood Fever]

After 18 weeks of mostly victories and a couple of narrow losses I'd nearly forgotten how so many can turn on their club with harsh impulsive criticism after a loss.

Over those 18 weeks Horse was hailed as a genius at times for restoring a lost season and dragging us from the depths of despair to be the only team in the history of the VFL/AFL to make the finals from a 0-6 start (a start hampered by yet another late pre-season and injuries to keep players who had to work themselves into form). Now I'm relieved to see sanity has prevailed and he should be sacked after yet another poor performance (the first really poor performance in 3 months or so).

Great to see the return of doom and gloom regarding our list that saw the debuts of Dawson, Florent, Hayward, Fox, Melican, Newman; the development of Mills, Heeney, Papley and even Towers; and the return of AJ.

Buddy had an off night. Should take the shine off the Coleman that he won this year.

I'm reassured that Towers regains his whipping boy mantle after a month of people erroneously suggesting he had found enough confidence that his potential might have started to be realised.

Although Gary Rohan should be the heir apparent (apparently). And luckily for the Tippett thread, his form was poor enough to breathe life into it (don't worry about the injuries that resulted in the form slump).

Oh and all those players who should now be traded? Sorry all our energy was wasted when we were so excited about resigning them during the season.

Yes, wonderful to see that a loss can bring out the worst of some on RWO.

Swans, I am disappointed with your bookend 0-6 start and semi-final capitulation. But thank you for a memorable year from round 7 to the Elimination Final. And no much how I hurt as a supporter tonight after that loss closed the chapter of 2017 for us, I know the players and coaches are hurting more. While my life as a Swans fan is forever and will have many highs and lows to come, I do understand your lives as Swans players is more fleeting and tonight's loss will hurt you more than we as supporters will understand.

I look forward to tonight's disappointment spurring you greater successes in seasons to come.

We set a record unlikely to be broken by making finals after 0-6. We faced a Geelong team playing for its reputation. On the rebound, top four sides that lose the qualifying final have a massive record in the semi. We got hammered around the contest and when we did get the ball, turned it over time after time through fumbling and poor decisions. Last year we had a very poor game against GWS. We had no second chance this year. We are a very good team who looked tired, flat and a bit listless. It can happen in a one off game. To turn on players, coaches etc may be cathartic but is irrational. I am sure the club will analyse the year and make adjustments. Geelong's game plan worked last night and credit to them but we just didn't get our hand on the ball often enough and their pressure and energy was greater. Statistically, we were due for a bad one. Unfortunately, we had no second chance. Still rather be a Swan supporter- the team gave us a great ride considering everything.

[Agent 86]

Florent and Hayward are both children physically. They both have massive talent. Writing them off at 18 y.o is a little premature.

Not writing them off but not expecting much from them for next year. They're still kids and long way to go to compete regularly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ROK Lobster]

Agree with Nico. I watched with one of my non-footy following sons (he plays rugby). His analysis was that the Cats were too fit, too hard and too committed for the Swans. He made a similar comment to Nico - the Cats got the lucky bounces because there was always someone there for it to luckilly bounce to. Sydney are no good when they get behind early. As much as they love a close one (or we like to imagine they do) they do not seem to be able to claw back a 4 or 5 goal defecit. And as much as it pains me to say it, we have a lot of "Mr July" and "Mr August" types, but there are some players who go missing, all on the same day/night, in September.

[Nico]

Geelong we simply too fast for us. They ran hard from contest to contest to hassle us and too often we didn't have players running to support each other. It did seem one of those games where one side got the lucky bounces and spills but they smothered our hand passes so many times until the ball came out to their advantage. Geelong made their own luck and had so many players free.

[MattW]

States the problems well.

I was worried from the moment I realised that we had gone in with one - just one! - tall defender. We'll never know whether Melican might have made a difference but removing Reid from the forwards certainly did.

Why on earth did we largely omit Towers from rucking and move Sinclair back in, especially after what we saw last week? And Rohan is a forward, not a back. I can understand that the coaches might try desperate measures, but our back structures weren't working either.

But the worst problem was that as usually happens the game was won and lost in the middle where we didn't return the pressure. And Hail Marys belong in church, not on the football field. Our links weren't working and we blindly bombed to targets who weren't there.

It was just one of those nights, but unfortunately it was a final. Here's hoping for more consistency next year!

Yes. The structural imbalance was totally unnecessary. We had a formula which worked, why move away from it? To fit in Harry Cunningham?! The cost-benefit seemed obviously skewed. Perhaps complacency after we smashed Essendon at home. We didn't adapt. The team looked a mess. Disorganised. Unprepared.

After turning the season around with combative, physical play it was a humbling end. Wilted in a final again. Getting a reputation. Kind of mortifying.

[Matty10]

Getting knocked out of the finals is always disappointing - but the manner in which we were knocked out is the gut-wrenching part.

The team were just so collectively 'off' that recriminations seem pointless - and answers impossible to find or comprehend. It felt a lot like 2014, except that we have already had 2014 - and the pain of 2016. The ruthless resolve that we expected after those disappointments was absent last night.

You imagine that everyone at the club would be waking up today and wondering, 'what the hell happened?'. The output of last night beggars belief, and yet that is the reality we have to deal with.

The evenness of the season also screams out in a reverberating echo that it was wasted opportunity for ultimate success. It is very difficult to quantify underperformance in an 18-team competition, but if feels like we are a premiership short of where we should be - and that sucks nuts.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[707]

I don't think we can be proud of a year where the senior players didn't stand up for the for the first six games and protect the young blokes. I think that stinks. It also stinks that the game plan in those games was sooooo oooold that even I could have picked it off. i don't think we can be proud of losing to Hawks, who are a younger and less developed team than us, twice. I don't think losing to a younger and less developed squad in Geelong tonight is good enough. I don't think we would have been in this position if the coaches had trusted the young players and had stern words to the experienced players

Sorry Wolfie, that's simplistic.

[dimelb]

I do wish people would stop saying there is no plan b c or d. Tonight there were a lot of moves made but they all highlighted some problems.

They basically tried to play Sinclair in the ruck for large parts of the game and took him out of the forward line. Of course this meant towers only rucked for two minutes and we got a goal out of that. Instead we then had two useless rucks as neither Sinclair nor Naismith could influence the game.

Plan c was tried from the mid point of the second quarter when we threw Reid down back and McVeigh forward. This was a problem because McVeigh hadn't been able to impact the long kick to Dangerfield for height or speed reasons. He had also specialised in lateral kicks rather than the creative kicks we needed from a loose. So putting Reid back was supposed to stop the long kick - but this failed as well because Reid failed to mark the ball spilling those that he had the chance to mark and getting sucked into pushing contests instead of just attacking the ball. Plus it robbed us forward of the ball as we had also given up on Sinclair as a forward option.

Plan d was to put Rohan spare instead of Reid.

Nothing worked because we got clobbered at the coal face and our kicking forwards was deplorable and our key defenders were getting thrashed. Grundy was playing exclusively on Hawkins to the extent of following him off in the second quarter - so when Devon smith then shifts forward we have Hannebery playing on hiim and grundy sitting on the pine. Grundy couldn't stay with Hawkins on the lead as it was and but for Hawkins inability to mark on the lead he would have had an absolute bag kicked on him.

Rampe was unable to stay with Dangerfield and McVeigh positioned himself poorly to help there. Having said that when Mengelola marked uncontested in the first you knew something was up. I watched that from the other end and he and another cat just rolled back towards the centre and both were completely unmarked. To be so completely broken apart was just terrible.

I'm not particularly shocked by the result or performance - it was obvious ten minutes into the second quarter that we were gone, and it had a very similar feel to 2014 as you just knew we weren't able to compete for whatever reason. But I do worry about the inability to play with any fluency. Too often I've seen us play the kick and hope when experience ought to have shown us by now that unless things are set up right that this is a bad option.unfortunately it felt like they were always outnumbering us everywhere and we had no other options.

States the problems well.

I was worried from the moment I realised that we had gone in with one - just one! - tall defender. We'll never know whether Melican might have made a difference but removing Reid from the forwards certainly did.

Why on earth did we largely omit Towers from rucking and move Sinclair back in, especially after what we saw last week? And Rohan is a forward, not a back. I can understand that the coaches might try desperate measures, but our back structures weren't working either.

But the worst problem was that as usually happens the game was won and lost in the middle where we didn't return the pressure. And Hail Marys belong in church, not on the football field. Our links weren't working and we blindly bombed to targets who weren't there.

It was just one of those nights, but unfortunately it was a final. Here's hoping for more consistency next year!

[goswannies]

I guess it had to happen some time. The Cats first win over the Swans at the MCG in 120 years. Pity it was last night & in that manner

[Melbournehammer]

I do wish people would stop saying there is no plan b c or d. Tonight there were a lot of moves made but they all highlighted some problems.

They basically tried to play Sinclair in the ruck for large parts of the game and took him out of the forward line. Of course this meant towers only rucked for two minutes and we got a goal out of that. Instead we then had two useless rucks as neither Sinclair nor Naismith could influence the game.

Plan c was tried from the mid point of the second quarter when we threw Reid down back and McVeigh forward. This was a problem because McVeigh hadn't been able to impact the long kick to Dangerfield for height or speed reasons. He had also specialised in lateral kicks rather than the creative kicks we needed from a loose. So putting Reid back was supposed to stop the long kick - but this failed as well because Reid failed to mark the ball spilling those that he had the chance to mark and getting sucked into pushing contests instead of just attacking the ball. Plus it robbed us forward of the ball as we had also given up on Sinclair as a forward option.

Plan d was to put Rohan spare instead of Reid.

Nothing worked because we got clobbered at the coal face and our kicking forwards was deplorable and our key defenders were getting thrashed. Grundy was playing exclusively on Hawkins to the extent of following him off in the second quarter - so when Devon smith then shifts forward we have Hannebery playing on hiim and grundy sitting on the pine. Grundy couldn't stay with Hawkins on the lead as it was and but for Hawkins inability to mark on the lead he would have had an absolute bag kicked on him.

Rampe was unable to stay with Dangerfield and McVeigh positioned himself poorly to help there. Having said that when Mengelola marked uncontested in the first you knew something was up. I watched that from the other end and he and another cat just rolled back towards the centre and both were completely unmarked. To be so completely broken apart was just terrible.

I'm not particularly shocked by the result or performance - it was obvious ten minutes into the second quarter that we were gone, and it had a very similar feel to 2014 as you just knew we weren't able to compete for whatever reason. But I do worry about the inability to play with any fluency. Too often I've seen us play the kick and hope when experience ought to have shown us by now that unless things are set up right that this is a bad option.unfortunately it felt like they were always outnumbering us everywhere and we had no other options.

[Belmasta]

Match Day SEMI FINAL Geelong v Sydney MCG 7.50pm Friday 15 September

There will be plenty of teams lining up to sign Longmire. Only worth sacking someone if there's a replacement.

We were simply terrible - can't blame coach all the time.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree. The team that played last night contains the same talent that whipped Essendon last week. Longmire is certainly not to blame. I didn't like the fact that Sydney players were not on their man last night, not like they have been playing the last how ever many weeks. There was a glimps of what we expected them to do in the early parts of the third quarter but was not sustained. It looked very much like a game from rounds 2, 3 and 4. There can sometimes by a fine line between awesome and ordinary and we were on the wrong side of the line. Buddy was being tied down be Geelong and the long bombs they got away with last week should have been abandoned earlier for kicking to a free man.
More Cheer cheering next year. It's been a great ride this year from 0-6!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[bodgie]

Making finals is great. The Swans have maintained that standard for 20 years or more under several coaches. A truly golden era. One premiership with Roos and one with Longmule, 5 years ago. We have a premiership talented list and I reckon it's fair enough to question his role as much as anyone's to get that little extra to WIN a GF again soon. A fresh view might bring quick results from an acknowledged and well drilled group.It may backfire but some dramatic out of the box input after the roos/longmule transition era might be just what we need.