Sydney vs Carlton - Post-match thoughts

[desredandwhite]

What I reckon (with apologies to Robbie for hijacking his column name, which I came up with anyway).

- Very slick first half, though to be fair this was mostly due to Carlton being embarrassingly bad. We had so much space and time that we could have been ahead by 100 points, not 50+.

- Barry Hall. Got frustrated earlier on (resulting in an unnecessary report).. but to his credit I reckon he recovered well afterwards. Had a hand in some goals, and pushed up the ground where IMHO he is much more effective.

Paul Williams - Thrashed his own tagger and got a goal or two as well. Not a bad effort.

Saddo - Much improved game after his comeback last week. Very important in our defence, though he should go for the punch more often.

Barry, Bolton (C) - were fantastic.

Kennelly - looks a bit lost at the moment. Far from terrible, at least getting plenty of it.

Nick Davis - Thumbs up from me - did a lot of great work, plus kicked an absolute FREAK goal to seal it for us.

Cressa, Bolton (J), Kirk - Typical honest performance in midfield.

Micky O - Brilliant.

Goodes - Productive as usual.

Crowd - Good turnout at the legends stand end, and plenty of noise. Great effort.

That's about all I can think of right now.

[ugg]

Agree with most of those, except:

C. Bolton got a bit of towelling from Fevola. Would make a great 3rd or 4th defender, but he is not a CHB. If only he was 5 or so cms taller.

Goodes was pretty good but I felt was restricted by Prendergast somewhat.

Also, LRT did some great body work on French in the throw-in that led to Davis's soccer goal.

[desredandwhite]

Originally posted by ugg

C. Bolton got a bit of towelling from Fevola. Would make a great 3rd or 4th defender, but he is not a CHB. If only he was 5 or so cms taller.

Good point, I'm probably influenced somewhat by his great mopping up work early (looked like he was pushing upfield a bit too?).

Not a lot of gametime from LRT, Sunny, Schneides, but I don't think any of them disappointed - especially Schneider!

[Mike_B]

Sunny in particular was barely sighted. Schneids was good, and must be filthy on the umps where he kicked the goal but they made O'Loughlin take the shot for the holding free. Where was the advantage? And what would if Magic had missed - real useful that would have been!

[ugg]

That was a particularly stupid decision, one a few that really galled me today. Talking about unsighted players, was O'Keefe even on the ground after half time?

[motorace_182]

Umps were disgraceful both ways. Carlton and us got a lot of sketchy frees against.
And what happened to the rule that if u play on while outside the boundary line its a throw in? Cos a few time it happened and the umps waved play on. Schneiderman was robbed by the yellow maggots. Plus there was the holding the bal free against Saddo, luckily Kouda choked

[liz]

Agree with counter-suggestions that C Bolton was soundly beaten by Fevola, as was Barry later on.

Several players didn't really contribute (for whatever reason) - Sunny, O'Keefe standouts here.

Goodes downer by his standards, though still contributor.

Williams, Bolton (J) Mathews and Cressa all played decent enough games but will be good to get Maxfield back to add some more aggression round the packs. Fosdike was one of the better four quarter performers, I thought.

Tiger will play better games, but not a passenger.

Team needs to work on centre clearances. We were killed in the second half.

Great to have some real class down forward. Players like Davis and O'Loughlin don't need many chances to make it count and once Davis scored that second goal in the final quarter you knew we were home and dried.

[Mike_B]

I'm not sure what happened to ROK, but I don't think he was on the ground much if at all after half time. I also noticed that e was in his tracksuit jacket in the rooms post game for the singing of the club song.

[Swansinger]

Originally posted by motorace_182
Umps were disgraceful both ways. Carlton and us got a lot of sketchy frees against.
And what happened to the rule that if u play on while outside the boundary line its a throw in? Cos a few time it happened and the umps waved play on. Schneiderman was robbed by the yellow maggots. Plus there was the holding the bal free against Saddo, luckily Kouda choked

Spot on.
I was told that two years ago the AFL lost quite a few umpires who weren't happy with their conditions(?).
Don't really know much about the umps but they have indeed made some very strange decisions of late.

Anyway , my main post-match thought is this - we are one win away from the finals.

[SWANSBEST]

Apparently Ryan hurt his calf.

I thought Cressa was our best and Matthews and Kirk were great contributors even though given tagger roles. Mickey O was brilliant and Davis showed again a big improvment in workrate.
Of the inexperienced players LRT was a verv useful contributor particularly, in the last quarter when the the pressure was on .

[Bas]

Second game now (collingwood other) where Nick Davis has come to the rescue to stem the attack.

At least the side didn't fade out completely. I hate these games because the Swans always go poorly against teams at the bottom of the ladder.

I expected a big performance from Carlton after last week and didn't expect the thrashing that some predicted here.

As Roos said it's still a five goal win and gives us equal percentage with collingwood. A win by Port and Bombers tonight will have Sydney in 2nd.

Lot's of hard work ahead though.