Oh well, bad day, move on

[Go Swannies]

Originally posted by Thunder Shaker
I'm so glad we've got a week off before our next game. Otherwise we could have been close to the same predicament as the Hawks, who had to pick an injured player as an emergency for their last game.

Hang on - we're putting injured players in the 18. Does that mean we win and are even more of a basket case than the Hawks?

[Damien]

Originally posted by Go Swannies
Hang on - we're putting injured players in the 18. Does that mean we win and are even more of a basket case than the Hawks?

Hopefully one of our players will get caught drink driving this week and lie about it, then we and go out and punch a few Collingwood players in a few weeks, lose by 70 and crow about how we won the respect of the football world

Then we will join the hawks in that basket

[NMWBloods]

Sure we should move on, but at the same time let's not dismiss today's game completely as an aberration. Our team has really not performed enormously well this year, and injuries are only part of the story.

We have had one really good game this year - St.Kilda.
We have had one pretty good game - Kangaroos.

Our game against Brisbane was good in that we nearly won, but we didn't play particularly well and they were fairly under-done too.

We have failed to beat some leading sides - Melbourne, Essendon - showing our vulnerability to pressure.

We have failed badly against a poor side - Richmond.
We have just managed to put away some ordinary sides - Geelong, Bulldogs, Hawthorn.

We lost a lot of experience and talent going into today?s game, but the remaining players should still have been quite capable and were experienced with an average of more than 80 games per player. This is why I was particularly disappointed with such a poor effort ? it?s not like we had a team of complete rookies out there.

Not really sure where we are going or why we have underperformed, but it has not been a great year so far. We just can't seem to string a number of good performances together, and injuries have been only part of the story.

It's been a very inconsistent year and I don't think experience explains that completely either. Our 22 has an average of about 90-100 games per player, so that is a reasonable amount of experience, certainly as much as many other performing teams this year, so I don't completely buy the story that "we are building a young side and it will be a bumpy ride." Is the story then that our team isn't quite good enough? How does that explain last year and certain great performances on the odd occasion?

One of the mitigating factors is that this year our team has lacked stability, but had a lot last year. We were unbelievably lucky with injurie last year, and that has rebounded on us this year, despite some people not believing either of these things.

Still, I'm just a bit confused on what we should expect from this team.

[chammond]

Originally posted by NMWBloods
Still, I'm just a bit confused on what we should expect from this team.

A finals berth . . . no more.

[ScottH]

Maybe it is time to start blooding the young guys. Throw them in at the deep end and see how they handle it. Give the senior crew some time to FULLY recover from there injuries.

I was devastated today. Not so much from the bad game, just from the constant injuries. I was shellshocked!! The last thing we needed today was anymore injuries.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by chammond
A finals berth . . . no more.

Well, that's actually going to be a pretty tight contest unfortunately. I had been expecting a solid 5th-8th finish.

[anniswan]

My daughter found it so bad that she had a sudden severe asthma attack. As the ambo came into the house, he made the comment no wonder she is so sick. Just what I needed ;-)

Spent the last half of the game in the emergency dept so I didn't have to endure it.

She is OK now.

AS

[liz]

Originally posted by NMWBloods


We lost a lot of experience and talent going into today?s game, but the remaining players should still have been quite capable and were experienced with an average of more than 80 games per player. This is why I was particularly disappointed with such a poor effort ? it?s not like we had a team of complete rookies out there.

Not really sure where we are going or why we have underperformed, but it has not been a great year so far. We just can't seem to string a number of good performances together, and injuries have been only part of the story.

Simple averages can be very misleading at times - and this is one of them. The team had a combined games experience going into this match of 1880 games but almost 30% of that is attributable to two players - and one of those was barely on the ground. More to the point, 8 players went in with 20 or fewer games experience. All these players have to start somewhere, and any team should be able to accomodate a handful, but to "carry 8" is a big ask for any team.

Injuries, rookies etc etc are not excuses for a loss like todays but they provide some explanation of why things happen. The Sydney team does not have a spread of talent of Brisbane or even the Saints, and relies on consistency, team work and confidence. As GS said earlier in this thread, you could tell they didn't believe they were going to win from their body language at first centre bounce and with no confidence, the fumbles arrived. Again, this is not an excuse, merely an observation.

I agree that you can't always just walk away from a loss and say "them things happen" and the team won't. They'll be reviewing the tape as they do for three days at the start of every week, going over what worked and what didn't. But I do think there was far more to be learned from the Dees, Bombers and Tigers games than there was from this one, in the overall scheme of things.

I'm sure the Lions didn't dwell too much on their thumping from Freo last week, or even from their big loss at the Gabba last year by the Weagles. As the title of this thread says, sometimes you just have to cop what happened and move on.

[v8_dude]

hi guys, im not actually a swans supporter, but was at the game today going for the swans, thanks to the guys who let me use the flag for the day, you might remember me, i was the centrals supporter.
anyway thanks for today and im sure you will bounce back.

[BAM_BAM]

If the players had the same thoughts I did when finding out Doyle was definitely out, then they would have had their resolve tweaked a little. However they are professionals and should have adpated a bit better. The margin was disappointing.

I think we were lacking, in many respects to application, but we can't leave the blame entirely there. We were under done and struggled as a result. I was fearful of only having 18 left.

But as Charlie mentioned, at least this has come with a weeks grace before our next match. Hopefully we'll find some players get the rest required and perhaps it will be enough time to get over some injuries.

I felt heart sore when Monty went off. Such a pitty he's been playing sooooo well.

Heads up boys, get back on the track and come out in two weeks the better for it.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by lizz
Simple averages can be very misleading at times - and this is one of them. The team had a combined games experience going into this match of 1880 games but almost 30% of that is attributable to two players - and one of those was barely on the ground. More to the point, 8 players went in with 20 or fewer games experience. All these players have to start somewhere, and any team should be able to accomodate a handful, but to "carry 8" is a big ask for any team.

I agree on these points to some degree, however I think that explains the loss, which I expected, but not the full extent of the poor performance.

Breaking down the games, we can see that the increase in the number of <25 gamers was a critical factor, however we still have a lot of players >100 games who were there, and they didn't really stand up sufficiently.

If we break down games of the players, and compare to last year's final, last week and to Geelong and StKilda, two young sides doing well currently, it is quite interesting:

                           Sydney
              Last yr   Last wk    This wk    Geelong   StKilda
<25              4        6          8          4          1
25-50            0        0          0          5          7
51-100           7        4          4          6          5
101-150          7        7          7          4          4
151-200          1        3          1          1          4
>200             3        2          2          1          1

Now, what this shows is that definitely the Swans had problems, as you note Liz, with covering their < 2 season guys. However, we had as many >50 game players as Geelong and St.Kilda, which should cover the extra burden of the < 25 gamers to some degree. Obviously the burden was too much this time. However, I think it is only partly the excuse, and poor team performance is a bigger factor.

Injuries, rookies etc etc are not excuses for a loss like todays but they provide some explanation of why things happen.

I agree.

The Sydney team does not have a spread of talent of Brisbane or even the Saints, and relies on consistency, team work and confidence. As GS said earlier in this thread, you could tell they didn't believe they were going to win from their body language at first centre bounce and with no confidence, the fumbles arrived. Again, this is not an excuse, merely an observation.

Yep - and that's why I found the game disappointing. We did not play well and we did not play as a team. Injuries and rookies were only partly the issue.

I agree that you can't always just walk away from a loss and say "them things happen" and the team won't. They'll be reviewing the tape as they do for three days at the start of every week, going over what worked and what didn't. But I do think there was far more to be learned from the Dees, Bombers and Tigers games than there was from this one, in the overall scheme of things.

To some degree yes, although it does worry me that they fell away so badly today.

I'm sure the Lions didn't dwell too much on their thumping from Freo last week, or even from their big loss at the Gabba last year by the Weagles. As the title of this thread says, sometimes you just have to cop what happened and move on.

Yes, but I would feel happier if we had been playing better this year, which is what the Lions can look at for example. That we have really struggled for form remains a concern.

[monopoly19]

I think one of the most disappointing aspects of today's game (and Roosy touched on it in one of the articles I've seen), was that even if Port had superior class/experience, the one thing we could control was the effort we put in, and it seemed like it was lacking all over the ground. One of our strengths, IMHO, is our one-percenters, and the number of missed tackles and the lack of hard chasing other than from a select few was one thing we didn't enforce like we could/should have. I reckon it was partly to do with the fact that Kirky had a shocker (!), and that he is usually one of our main enforcers and leaders. It just seemed to all unravel from the word go.

Just out of interest, who was playing on Peter Burgoyne before Maxfield was moved on to him?

There hasn't been a game like that in the last season and a half where we seemed to just fold from the very beginning. Sure, it was doubtful we would win (although I personally underestimated the value of Barry/Ball/O'Loughlin and still thought we were a good chance until Doyle was ruled out), but it was the first time in a while that the players seemed to think they couldn't win either.

People have been talking of Ablett and how he's not up to standard. O'Keefe for me was one of the most disappointing. Did not get into the game at all when he had more experience than many out there (Ablett, Powell, Bevan, MJ, LRT, McVeigh, James etc) and had the opportunity to do something for a team in desperate need.

[Steve]

Let Port think they've redeemed themselves after the QF last year.

Port at AAMI is a tough ask (March - August), and let's face it we were decimated by injury. Barry, Schauble and O'Loughlin are 3 of our first-choice goal-goal line, and we were also down to fourth and fifth choice ruckmen (assuming Goodes is No.3).

We've used 30 players so far this year, which would be at least 33 had others (Schauble, Fixter, Sundqvist) been fit/available - that's wooden-spoon stuff for other clubs.

[liz]

Originally posted by NMWBloods


Yep - and that's why I found the game disappointing. We did not play well and we did not play as a team. Injuries and rookies were only partly the issue.

Port have been one of the best teams in the H&A for three years and we were playing them in Adelaide. They have had their injury worries, but apart from Francou and Primus (both of whom they have had to learn to cope without) they got close to their best team out there today.

So yes, the margin was disappointing but we were playing a very good side on their turf.

And while injuries can only be used as an explanation to a degree, the ruck hole was particularly devasting. MJ may have been giving the best he could, but on innumerable occasions, he was unable to provide any contest at all and they got clean possession from a tap to advantage and from there it was wham, bam, thank you maam.

Kirk off his game was another factor - his hands are normally so clean that his fumbles today were costly. And when his team mates saw this happening, they started fumbling worse. Again, it can't be an excuse if one player is struggling but each little thing adds up.

I also think that the team played "dumb" footy at times, particularly going forward. Not having Magic there was a problem and Davis was a liability at times, but there were too many kicks forward without thought or control. So the effort they were expending went unrewarded far too many times.

So add all these factors together (some of which overlap):

- number of raw rookies
- completely outclassed ruck division
-injuries going into the game
- injuries sustained during the game such that there was practically no bench by midway through the third quarter
- one of the most reliable midfielders having a fumble fest
- good opposition
- away ground disadvantage, particularly with the windy conditions that Port would have had far more understanding of at that ground than us
- possibly a bit of flatness from last week's effort
- appalling delivery forward

and it's actually pretty amazing that we didn't lose by far far more. That we kept the margin about the same from midway through the third quarter (when things were looking ugly ugly ugly) was probably mostly due to Port giving up, but our guys at least had to keep running and chasing and most of them did that, however ineffectually at times. People might bemoan the effort put in, but at the end there didn't look to be many players with anything left in their tank.

[Go Swannies]

Everyone has done close analysis of what went wrong for us. But another aspect is that Port is starting to develop a bit of a "fortress AAMI" this season. Last year they lost very few games all round. This year they have only won once away from home - at Subiaco to the Eagles, of all places. They got caned away by Melbourne (53) and the Roos (92). But the only game they have lost at AAMI was to the other home team - the Crows (32).

Their other games at AAMI were the Cats by 4, Tigers (78), Pies (17), Dogs (55), Hawks (81) and Bombers (96).

Yes our attack fumbled and our defence went missing but we are just part of a pattern.