Our Style of Play

[ihamilto]

Having read many of the threads recently posted one thing that
did not get many mentions was our style of play in particular our
overuse of handball and our tendency to play along the wings
Friday night was a good example in wet conditions surely a long
kick into the forward line or out of defence is better value than
handballing backwards or sidewards to a teammate under
pressure and it was frustrating to see them going along the
boundary line so much as a junior I was always taught that down
the centre was the quickest way to goal. I agree with many of
the comments in relation to what we need to take the next step,
we clearly need another tall strong and mobile KPP. Leo Barry
and Graig Bolten are great defenders but they cant be expected
to match up on giant forwards every week it may work sometimes
as it did this year but to win the flag they must have help. The
midfield could certainly use a Cameron Bruce but I have faith in
Tim Schmidt Willoughby and Malceski these guys can play and
will be given a chance next year hopefully so too will Sean Dempster.
As I have said in previous posts I would love Brad Ottens at the
Swans sadly I cant see Terry Wallace letting him go.
Overall a good year but still plenty of work to do
cheers Ian

[swansrule100]

the thing that annoyed me was they constantly went down the wing....

they did that against essendon and were crap til they started going down the spine!

why dont they learn?

guess its easy to sit here and say it though

[cruiser]

It was also frustrating that they kicked the ball out on the full too many times when trying to kick it down the wing.

[Boodnutz]

It's unnerving to see a team that persists with dry weather football when it is wet. When you get a night like Friday night all subtleties go out the window and its a slugfest. Is it because we play too few wet games and they simply don't know how to adjust?
Unless you hit someone on the chest, every kick more than 30 metres long will go to ground. therefore, there shouldn't be any need to go to the wings and persist with the handball/short game.
I was pretty disappointed even though Mathews, Willo, Mick and Maxfield were hurt. they've let a good opportunity slip and they know it.

[SimonH]

I wanted to punch things after the Richmond game at the SCG. It was the most frustrating game I've seen in Roos' coaching tenure, because of our apparent total unwillingness to acknowledge that the ball was wet. St Kilda on Friday was basically a replay against far superior opposition.

The problem was that it was way too wet for strings of 5 handballs to release a player, and 20 metre chip-passes to position along the boundary line, but it was dry enough for Gehrig and Riewoldt to grip the pill.

Especially frustrating when we'd proved just a week before that we could adjust (although, significantly, we'd already started getting on top of the Weagles before it pissed down). People did get overexcited after one victory in a match that was only half-played in the rain: Sydney's wet-weather tactics need to be rethought for 2005.