Not a good start.

[sharpie]

I think the lack of structure is under-rated.

When you have a strong spine, especially up forward, it encourages the midfield to kick long and direct. Without the presence of some good key targets, the midfielders are going to want to chip it around, go sideways, and wait for options to appear.

With Hall & O'Loughlin up forward, surrounded by other classy forwards, our midfield has known where/who to kick it to. Today with really only Hall up forward, and our drive through halfback lost due to injuries to our key defenders and subsequent reshuffling of our flankers, there was no clear pattern for moving the ball forward.

I think this leads to our skills becoming worse, as the midfielders chip around and over-handball.

The other thing the lack of structure does is frees up the opposition's key defenders in particular. Chad Cornes is the obvious example of this. He wasnt needed down back to take a good forward, so he could roam free and cause havoc.

[chammond]

Originally posted by NMWBloods
Compare this side to the one that won the final last year.

The only differences are Barry and Schauble. Certainly good defensive players, but Barry didn't star last year. Port are also without Stevens and Montgomery.

The difference between the sides cannot be explained by injuries alone.

I think a lot of the difference is due to the injuries the Swans have suffered.

And the seemingly low morale of the side must also be at least partly due to the key players missing from last week's win. It must be demoralising to realise that you are going into a tough game with only one ruckman, a complete novice who has played only a handful of games.

As for comparing this team with the one that beat Port in the 2003 finals . . . it is significantly different.

Last year we had Goodes playing at All Australian level as ruckman, with Doyle to give him a rest. And Davis and Schneider fit and firing. And Cressa racking up possessions.

And we certainly didn't have Buchanan, Meiklejohn, Powell, Bevan and McVeigh in last year's game.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by chammond
Last year we had Goodes playing at All Australian level as ruckman, with Doyle to give him a rest.

Remember that Doyle was injured early against Port last year though.

I'm not comparing with the expectation that we should have won - I never really expected we would (as you may recall I was told I should believe!!), however a better effort from the guys would have been more pleasing.

They may be slightly undermanned in terms of talent and experience, however that doesn't explain a fairly weak effort in minding your opponent, running and making a contest, and tackling. On top of that, some poor disposals and decision making by some of our reasonably experienced players also doesn't help.

I posted elsewhere our experience level.

We had an average of 83 games per player today. Normally we have about 99 and in last year's final it was 106. Now of course that makes a big difference, as I note above. However, I just don't think it should have made as big a difference as it did. For example Geelong are performing pretty well at the moment, and nearly beat Port last week, and their average games are only 80.

One of the key things though, is a stable team, which we have not had this year so much. Shows just how lucky we were last year, and we really were!!