hawks

[barry]

Hawthorn have the wood over us (along with Adelaide). And its pretty easy to see why. They are both tall sides with dominant tall ruckman.
Hopefully we wont see the hawks in the finals, and we somehow miss Adelaide.

But there is hope.

The critical play by Schwab was too keep Leo Barry stuck at FB (or thereabouts), in a key position, on a tall player who played well. Barry cant handle this, and it also stopped him being an effective runner out of the half back line.
Solution: We need another KP backman for these types of tall forward lines. Thats one of Seymour, Warfe or James in the senior side.


The dominant tall ruckman. Goodes gets exposed by these, and we cant expect LRT to step up like against Adelaide every week. This is not a "Ball" issue, as Jason struggled as well against the tall timber. We need a beanstalk to at least nullify the likes of Everitt.
Solution: For this year we need Doyle back. Going forward we need to recruit one of Charman, Keating or McDonald from Brisbane.

[sharp9]

I have to disagree a little as to me the difference was not their talls, but their 5 or 6 running midfielders who, time and again, ran forward WITH NO OPPOSITION FROM OUR DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDERS.

They were able to run as a group and for some unknown reason, receive the ball without a Swan at their shoulder. That was the killer problem.

Tall for tall we broke even with Goodes, Hall and O'Loughlin having an equal effect to Thompson, Everitt and Rawlings.

On the ground we were absolutely slaughtered. Was anyone tagging Mitchell? I guess he was matched on Cressa, who had a shocker. Just when we closed to three goals, with the momentum and won the centre clearance he dropped a handpass, then fumbled, and they ran the other way to score. Game over. (to give the most obvious example)

That was the real problem (and Scwab out coaching Roos by ensuring that EVERY match up was the one he wanted. Barry, and Kennelly defending instead of rebounding. Kirk defending at half back instead of choking the number 1 ball winner etc. etc. etc.

[dawson]

Schwab outcoaching us????

Try George Stone - he knows our team better than we do.

The Hawks flooded our backline and then caused turnovers which resulted in fast breaks.

That meant their talls were only facing one on one contests.

Other than that, they murdered us at the stoppages and we were back to our sloppy disposal ways.

[BAM_BAM]

Originally posted by dawson
Schwab outcoaching us????

Try George Stone - he knows our team better than we do.

my thoughts exactly. Have we beaten them since he left us?

[Rod_]

Agreed

We were out played and out thought

George Stone for sure. Knows most of the set plans


IMO

Rod_

Hope they don't make the finals (5th vs 8th.....??)

[liz]

The good news for us is that the Hawks have almost no chance of making the finals. They are two games and considerable % behind the Bombers in 8th. They would require either the Bombers or Eagles to lose all their games from here, as well as winning all of their 3 remaining games.

I'm not entirely convinced they have the wood over us, in any case. Our team just didn't run on Saturday night and hence the game plan broke down, causing uncertainty and fumbles. If we had applied even a fraction of the pressure to their ball carriers that they did to ours, things might have been very different. In fact, the pressure skills all over the ground were woeful - the normal tackling in defence wasn't there, resulting in a handful of soft goals to small midfielders, while they were taking the ball away from our forward 50 with far more ease than teams normally do. Match-ups may have had something to do with it but I suspect work-rate had as much of an effect.

[chammond]

Must admit I haven't noticed the Swans struggling against tall teams particularly. But we certainly get found out by teams with a depth of quality on-ballers.

Given how few games he has played this season, we have been very unlucky to come up against an in-form Everitt twice.

Even so, we nearly got out of it . . . just a couple of fumbles and a missed mark late in the third quarter . . . we could easily have gone into the last segment virtually on even terms. That would have really been game on!

Looking on the bright side . . . . if we can just give Collingwood a thrashing . . . . . it will still have been a good season!