10 goal spanking

[barry]

My kingdom for a 10 goal win.

We seem completely unable to do this now days. Even against the strugglers. We had the Hawks by the nuts at 1/4 time, but instead of cruising off to a nice 100 point win, 15 minutes into the 2nd quarter they were back in it, and we snuck home by a point.

Why cant we put teams to the sword ?

[Go Swannies]

Too true. Even against North we took our foot off the accelerator and let them get an "acceptable" loss. Above all else, percentage could be all important at the end of the season.

[Sanecow]

Agreed. We get ahead and then something happens that lets the other team get back into the game - Is it the players taking their foot off the gas? Is it overconfidence? Is it bad coaching from our side or good coaching from the other? It seems to happen quarter by quarter so I've been tending to see it as a coaching issue. But I could well be wrong

[TheHood]

As successful as Pat Rafter was and I loved the bloke, but he had a very labour intensive game. High stress on the body and taxing on the fitness tank. He could kill you in a set and let you cruise back in 25 minutes later. Then he had to fight like hell to stay alive.

I think our running game plan is also very labour intensive. It requires effort and concentration from too many blokes who have to be running at 95%. They only have the energy to do this in spurts, thus the spurts have been less and for shorter periods in 2004.

Thats my personal theory in any case.

[Alec]

Re: 10 goal spanking

Originally posted by barry
My kingdom for a 10 goal win.

We seem completely unable to do this now days. Even against the strugglers. We had the Hawks by the nuts at 1/4 time, but instead of cruising off to a nice 100 point win, 15 minutes into the 2nd quarter they were back in it, and we snuck home by a point.

Why cant we put teams to the sword ?

I've been rueing this for years. We've always lacked that stomp-the-throat-while-they're-down factor that seems to be present in those teams which regularly contest the flag.

We are a bit of a momentum team. We are able to generate a heap of urgency - especially in Syd. But we seem to prefer to wrestle a team and come at them rather than lead all day, and we seem to struggle to kick on from small leads of the 20pt variety.

This year has been no different. We've kicked out to quick early leads in 4 of our 5 losses. We booted 5 or 6 goals in the 1st qtrs against Bris, Melb, Rich and WC. We kicked 5 the 1st against Richmond, and then finished with about 8 for the match!

It could be a sign we have a problem readjusting after teams mix it up on us.

[NMWBloods]

I was thinking this too, but we haven't done too badly in biggish wins (>50 points) over the past year or so.

This year we have the Kangaroos win.

Last year we had four - Carlton, Essendon, Bulldogs, St Kilda.

So overall not a bad effort.

At the other end of the scale, in that time our biggest loss is 44 points against the Lions in the PF, no losses over 50 points and only 3 over 30 points.

In some cases I think that teams take their foot off the pedal and in other cases the other team just gets a bit of a run on, as can happen in games.

In closer games, like Hawthorn when we're 5 goals up, I think we lose concentration and a lot of our game is finely tuned between great things and disaster, so we let our opponents get back into the game. This was something we rarely did last year and I would suspect confidence has a lot to do with it.

[floppinab]

I was sitting at home looking at the Hawks game keeping an eye out for this type of issue.

Generally speaking the majority of teams will run a few changes if the opposition is getting more than 3 goals ahead. It's a little bit our inability to have a strong Plan B when this happens.
Take a look at the back end of the first q. on Sat. To then the Hawks were bombing long into their foward line, spoil, our back line run it forward, ya da ya da classic Swans still.

Then it stops, they hold the ball up, flood their forward line a bit more, pressure our half back runners a bit more, concentrate on winning stoppages and scoring goals from them (our key weakness) and away they go.

We are definately too one dimensional at the moment, we need to develop other avenues to our forwards, in particular be happy to bomb long from half back/centre on occasions and back our forwards to win those one on ones. Again this was happening a little at least on Sat.

On the flip side our in close work in the last q. was a definate positive (reminicences of the Port final last year). THAT'S what we need to take forward into this week.

[Destructive]

Re: 10 goal spanking

Originally posted by barry
My kingdom for a 10 goal win.

We seem completely unable to do this now days. Even against the strugglers. We had the Hawks by the nuts at 1/4 time, but instead of cruising off to a nice 100 point win, 15 minutes into the 2nd quarter they were back in it, and we snuck home by a point.

Why cant we put teams to the sword ?

I agree, it's been so frustrating that we can't bury the opposition anymore. Except for the Kangaroos in Canberra that is.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by floppinab
We are definately too one dimensional at the moment, we need to develop other avenues to our forwards, in particular be happy to bomb long from half back/centre on occasions and back our forwards to win those one on ones. Again this was happening a little at least on Sat.

This has often been an issue with the Swans. We have a game plan that works well when our opponents let us. However, when things change, particularly when the pressure is ramped up, we can struggle.

On the flip side our in close work in the last q. was a definate positive (reminicences of the Port final last year). THAT'S what we need to take forward into this week.

One of the problems with this is we don't really have a team that can win a close-in game like this. We struggle to get clearances and won't kick many goals.

[Thunder Shaker]

The Swans play like Pro Wrestlers. We do our moves, then the opposition get to do theirs while we catch our breath. I am looking forward to the next time we give a side a good old-fashioned twonking.

[SXP]

Originally posted by Thunder Shaker
The Swans play like Pro Wrestlers. We do our moves, then the opposition get to do theirs while we catch our breath. I am looking forward to the next time we give a side a good old-fashioned twonking.

In the next decade?

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by Thunder Shaker
The Swans play like Pro Wrestlers. We do our moves, then the opposition get to do theirs while we catch our breath.

LOL - that's a great analogy!!