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Swans in a mess
Comment by Jeff Wells
May 17, 2004
MIDWAY through the fourth quarter in Sydney's 27-point loss to the ordinary West Coast Eagles, Ten showed a fish finger commercial that said it all.
Some drongo, looking very much like a Swans supporter, is trying to pound some tomato sauce out of a big bottle with the heel of his hand, with nothing happening. Thump, thump, thump like a red and white beanie banging on a brick wall.
Finally, when the bottle is loosened up, like the Sydney game plan, there is a big red splat symbolising the Swans' season.
Last week, after they had lost their third in a row, there were reported grumblings that the mongrel media had been too quick to turn on them.
Bulletin, gentlemen. The sauce is on the carpet and the jackals are ready to lick.
You have dropped your bundle and the critics are poised with a red-hot poker as you stoop to pick it up.
If you keep losing to bums like West Coast, kids will be booting you out of clinics and mums pelting you with scones. Let's hope you can get a hand to some of them. You went from to 3-4 to 3-5. After beating the Kangaroos in round four you were world-beaters. Now, if you are egg-beaters, the eggs are even money.
This will be remembered as the day that Sydney started Jason Ball on the bench and Adam Goodes in the ruck and Stephen Doyle was dropped.
Had I not heard coach Paul Roos explain that Goodes was simply not big enough to carry the ruck? But the rumblings had started. If Goodes won a Brownlow Medal in the ruck he should be back in the ruck and not fumbling around the forward line. So what happened to the Roos' method?
He has been universally hailed a genius and a saviour but he didn't stick to his guns. So now who is coming up with these brilliant ideas?
So you pick two ruckmen on a big ground and start them at the bounce. Goodes, at 194cm and 96kg, takes the bounce against 204cm and 104kg Dean Cox. Both lead with their right knee and Goodes reels away with his smashed. And, after 10 seconds, that is the last we see of him.
Sydney now have only one ruckman, the yeoman Ball, who proceeds to play an inspirational game against Cox with Jason Saddington - who is as much a ruckman as he is an astrophysicist - as back up.
Ball managed 23 hitouts to Cox's 27 but eventually the load wore him down and Cox came into the game, with a bunch of other tall young players who can actually take marks.
But apart from Brett Kirk, who was surgically dissecting Eagles star Ben Cousins until the third quarter when he was dropped by a kamikaze charge from Daniel Kerr, which went on report, Sydney again struggled to frighten anybody.
Kirk could end up being a very confused young man. He is like some kind of AFL Simon Poidevin, always crawling out from under a stack of bodies after putting his on the line, while his teammates allow the opposition to sweep the ball away.
Sydney actually won the clearances 40 to 35 but around big Subiaco gathered only 156 kicks to 175.
Barry Hall, with 10 marks and five goals, and Michael O'Loughlin, three goals, were worthy targets. But Ryan O'Keefe, Nick Davis, Jared Crouch and Leo Barry picked a bad day to take holidays. Little dynamo Adam Schneider was badly missed.
West Coast had all the emotional advantage with the announcement that big Glen Jakovich was playing the last of 276 games.
They put him up front and, even though he is a defender who has moved about as nimbly as an aircraft carrier for years, he was able to kick three goals in the first quarter against shrimp Swan key backs such as Craig Bolton and Heath James.
If things keep going this way the Sydney administration will have a lot to answer for. If the promised people power ever surfaces the board could find itself selling beanies on Driver Ave. Goodes sacrificed. Captain Stuart Maxfield on the bench at the start of the last quarter. What a mess.
It was one of those days when you could run down the list and not stop groaning - or reaching for an axe. James and Bolton are both goers, but should be in back pockets. Tadhg Kennelly is a major talent but is wasted on the full-back line when he could be running through the middle kicking goals.
Sydney haven't recruited the key position big guys. Look at who has been running around as the new boys, as Roos claims to be planning a couple of years ahead as well as trying to win games this year.
He got lucky when Schneider bolted out of the blue - a little hunk with an instinctive football brain.
But Jarrad McVeigh, Amon Buchanan, Paul Bevan, Luke Ablett, Mark Powell, Matthew Davis, Jarrad Sundqvist and Aaron Rogers are no Wayne Careys.
They are there to replace a bunch of players, including Maxfield, Paul Williams and Matthew Nicks, who are starting to show the inevitable signs of age - just as Wayne Schwass and Daryn Cresswell did in the last couple of years before quitting.
And O'Loughlin is becoming a week-to-week proposition in a weak-to-weaker team.
[email protected]
The Daily Telegraph
Comment by Jeff Wells
May 17, 2004
MIDWAY through the fourth quarter in Sydney's 27-point loss to the ordinary West Coast Eagles, Ten showed a fish finger commercial that said it all.
Some drongo, looking very much like a Swans supporter, is trying to pound some tomato sauce out of a big bottle with the heel of his hand, with nothing happening. Thump, thump, thump like a red and white beanie banging on a brick wall.
Finally, when the bottle is loosened up, like the Sydney game plan, there is a big red splat symbolising the Swans' season.
Last week, after they had lost their third in a row, there were reported grumblings that the mongrel media had been too quick to turn on them.
Bulletin, gentlemen. The sauce is on the carpet and the jackals are ready to lick.
You have dropped your bundle and the critics are poised with a red-hot poker as you stoop to pick it up.
If you keep losing to bums like West Coast, kids will be booting you out of clinics and mums pelting you with scones. Let's hope you can get a hand to some of them. You went from to 3-4 to 3-5. After beating the Kangaroos in round four you were world-beaters. Now, if you are egg-beaters, the eggs are even money.
This will be remembered as the day that Sydney started Jason Ball on the bench and Adam Goodes in the ruck and Stephen Doyle was dropped.
Had I not heard coach Paul Roos explain that Goodes was simply not big enough to carry the ruck? But the rumblings had started. If Goodes won a Brownlow Medal in the ruck he should be back in the ruck and not fumbling around the forward line. So what happened to the Roos' method?
He has been universally hailed a genius and a saviour but he didn't stick to his guns. So now who is coming up with these brilliant ideas?
So you pick two ruckmen on a big ground and start them at the bounce. Goodes, at 194cm and 96kg, takes the bounce against 204cm and 104kg Dean Cox. Both lead with their right knee and Goodes reels away with his smashed. And, after 10 seconds, that is the last we see of him.
Sydney now have only one ruckman, the yeoman Ball, who proceeds to play an inspirational game against Cox with Jason Saddington - who is as much a ruckman as he is an astrophysicist - as back up.
Ball managed 23 hitouts to Cox's 27 but eventually the load wore him down and Cox came into the game, with a bunch of other tall young players who can actually take marks.
But apart from Brett Kirk, who was surgically dissecting Eagles star Ben Cousins until the third quarter when he was dropped by a kamikaze charge from Daniel Kerr, which went on report, Sydney again struggled to frighten anybody.
Kirk could end up being a very confused young man. He is like some kind of AFL Simon Poidevin, always crawling out from under a stack of bodies after putting his on the line, while his teammates allow the opposition to sweep the ball away.
Sydney actually won the clearances 40 to 35 but around big Subiaco gathered only 156 kicks to 175.
Barry Hall, with 10 marks and five goals, and Michael O'Loughlin, three goals, were worthy targets. But Ryan O'Keefe, Nick Davis, Jared Crouch and Leo Barry picked a bad day to take holidays. Little dynamo Adam Schneider was badly missed.
West Coast had all the emotional advantage with the announcement that big Glen Jakovich was playing the last of 276 games.
They put him up front and, even though he is a defender who has moved about as nimbly as an aircraft carrier for years, he was able to kick three goals in the first quarter against shrimp Swan key backs such as Craig Bolton and Heath James.
If things keep going this way the Sydney administration will have a lot to answer for. If the promised people power ever surfaces the board could find itself selling beanies on Driver Ave. Goodes sacrificed. Captain Stuart Maxfield on the bench at the start of the last quarter. What a mess.
It was one of those days when you could run down the list and not stop groaning - or reaching for an axe. James and Bolton are both goers, but should be in back pockets. Tadhg Kennelly is a major talent but is wasted on the full-back line when he could be running through the middle kicking goals.
Sydney haven't recruited the key position big guys. Look at who has been running around as the new boys, as Roos claims to be planning a couple of years ahead as well as trying to win games this year.
He got lucky when Schneider bolted out of the blue - a little hunk with an instinctive football brain.
But Jarrad McVeigh, Amon Buchanan, Paul Bevan, Luke Ablett, Mark Powell, Matthew Davis, Jarrad Sundqvist and Aaron Rogers are no Wayne Careys.
They are there to replace a bunch of players, including Maxfield, Paul Williams and Matthew Nicks, who are starting to show the inevitable signs of age - just as Wayne Schwass and Daryn Cresswell did in the last couple of years before quitting.
And O'Loughlin is becoming a week-to-week proposition in a weak-to-weaker team.
[email protected]
The Daily Telegraph
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