Round 22 Positives

[wyatt]

Fossie was actually really good today until he was taken off with precaution.

Willo also had one of the best halves of footy that I've seen from him for a while.

Another positive is the that we did really well without major contributions from JBolt, Goodes, Leo and ... LRT (go figure).

The other major positive is that the Swans continue to win. This might sound fairly self-evident but this has been extremely beneficial for my tipping as within my tipping group we have an unwritten law that we have to back our own teams. With the success of the Swans, I have raced to the lead of my group, but even better I am currently 2nd out of 120,570 in the Age tipping comp (footytips.com.au). I'm now 3/3 for this weekend's games, so hopefully due to the Swans success one of our's will take out the comp. Wish me luck for tomorrow's games!

[Thunder Shaker]

We won comfortably as predicted.

We got junk time and rested MOL and company for the third week in a row.

There were no injuries.

Micky's double poster was amusing, it should have been two points for hitting both posts!

We play Wet Toast.

I sat in the Ponsford stand one bay over from the cheer squad and there seemed to be a good mix of fans. There were a lot of members, some down from Sydney, many from all over Melbourne (lots of red and white on the train), and a contingent from Malmsbury (central Victoria) judging by all the Malmsbury Juniors guernseys I saw. Malmsbury play in a red and white strip that's similar to the Swans strip.

[satchmopugdog]

Could I sense in Stephen Silvani's voice today a sense of belonging to the Swans. He said LRT should have punched in that situation etc. etc. Maybe it's the languge teacher in me and the sensitivity to the spoken word.....but maybe we have a convert.

It would make it easier for his son to play in Sydney rather than endure the scrutiny of the Melbourne press. Obviously I'm thinking long term here, but hey that's what us parent's do until you eldest decides she wants to commit suicide.

[Thunder Shaker]

One other thing I forgot to mention: thirteen different goalkickers.

[ScottH]

No injuries.

Played at 50%.

Hawks were so bad we had time to clean up many skill errors.

[Go Swannies]

For the past few years, I've worried about the Swans' inability to bury teams with overwhelming wins. But the Lions game (only a fortnight ago!) ended that. The Roos game seemed to be a return to the inability to finish the job of crushing the opposition and found it interesting for Roos to say afterwards that he mainly wanted the team to lift to crush any Roos revival then regard extra goals in the Roos downtime as a bonus.

Yesterday, we seemed to be letting the Hawks into the game more than you'd expect, considering the skills and development levels of the two teams. So it's interesting to see this quote from the Sun Hun today:

"But we were able . . . to experiment a bit and give some of your younger players more responsibility".

So we can experiment with tempo against the team rated directly below us on the ladder and start grooming the kids against the Hawks. I wonder what he has planned for Friday?

[anne]

To win.

[Jeffers1984]

No major injuries thank christ and the ones that were under an injury cloud last week (Ball , Leo) seemed fine.

Another huuuuge positive was that we had 13 seperate goal kickers!!! Now that's gold.

[Refried Noodle]

Dunno where to put it so I'll put it here. Its kind of a 'regular season' positives:

Finished with 15 - 7, which is only two less wins than WC after all that. Also only one less win than 1996 and one better than 2003.

[stellation]

Originally posted by NMWBloods

Davis doing some nice things - clearances, kicks inside 50 and great goals.

Nicky D's work around the ground is what has really pleased me about the last couple of games (9 goals isn't too bad either!). He looks to be starting to build up a bit of confidence, and the great thing about the clearances is that the he looks to be breaking free and getting damaging clearances, not just shoveling the ball out and putting the pressure on someone else. Very encouraging for the finals (he has some September demons to get off his back), also for the future. He will only be 26 at the start of next season, if he can get his fitness up and stay injury-free have we found our long lost attacking midfield star?

[NMWBloods]

He did a couple of fantastic clearances, mini-Judd like when he gathered the ball, break away from a couple of attempted tackles and found a player in space.

Also, his kick inside 50 to Hall (which I think was Hall's first miss) was just superb!!