Arse about (I was thinking)

[ROK Lobster]

A few things got me thinking recently about the way the Swans play the game...

Read through RWO and you see that our discussions of the midfield usually talk about tagging, or at the very least the blue collar cortina crap. Kirk, our star midfileder, is a tagger. He plays his best footy when stopping, as he did last week. He is not really a creative player. The same goes for Benny, though not a true midfileder, but certainly plays pretty much towards the middle. Bolton is the same. He gets it, but is hardly a player to set us up through the middle. To an extent Buchy is an exception, but he is no Judd, or Kerr, or Cameron Bruce or even a Rischitelli (sp?). Goodes is just an enigma. Very generally I would suggest that our midfield is a defensive midfield. It is much more effective at disrupting an attack from an opponent than setting one up for ourselves. This is perhaps the main reason the Swans are rarely involved in either a shootout, or a blow out. We have a dour middle - it is like filling the centre square with mud.

On the other hand, I read today in one of the Leo 200 games articles that Leo credits Roos with a lot of his success by giving him the confidence to back himself, to go on crazy runs, to play attacking football etc. It made me realise that much of our attacking movement, comes from the back. We don't have backs in the style of Presti or Clement, or a Mal Michael. We have a light, fast, and on the whole very skilful back 6. I think that much of our creative play comes from the back, especially with the Irishman, but increasingly with Maceski and Dempster. Craig Bolton and Leo do their share, and I like it when I see Schneids named down back.

Now these comments are of a very general nature, but I think that - especially on the smaller SCG - the attacking backs and defending middle works well. If our middle get on top it means, not that we are getting it forward fast, but that the opposition are getting it to their forwards slowly. That gives our small backs time to organise, and reduces the liklihood of them getting toweled up by forwards leading into space. When the ball is turned over it means that the back half is congested, but because that it where the speed and creativity is (not always) the tight confines can be overcome by the pace (and generally good footskills) coming out of the back. Not always, and we don't go end to end in one foul swoop very often, but I think that generally our defence is centred in our midfield (if they are having an off day our backs get smashed) and our drive through the middle is centred in our backs.

[FootyontheBrain]

It's been the rare occassion that I agree with one of your posts, but credit where credit is due. A very astute observation this.

Further to your point, I think the fact that our forwards are willing to run plays an integral role in this, as well. Allowing us to get numbers behind the ball, and rebound from defense.

[goswannie14]

That seems to sum it up pretty well.

One thing that my Dad and I have been talking about is that it is all well and good to get first use of the ball with Spida, but we need a couple of good attacking mid-fielders to take advantage of that. Otherwise in the scenario that you point out, the ball has to go back to our defence before it goes forward. Which seems to be what happens to us.

[Alibi Monday]

ROK are you getting more and more sensible?

[Frog]

Paul Roos lost his personal coaching notes, and that was the first page?

Cannot do anything but agree.

[cruiser]

I'd never thought of it like that before ROK but it makes perfect sense. Now we need to delete this thread so that the teams game plan isnt exposed.

[Industrial Fan]

ROK, just admit that you hate Roos.

[Doctor J.]

Arse About

A few things got me thinking recently ...

I thought this was a post about how crap Arsenal have been this year, and Arsene Wenger is a smug coach who only thinks of himself. Silly me.

[dimelb]

ROK, I think this is well thought out and expressed. Makes a lot of sense to me. Who can add to our repertoire through the midfield? Perhaps increasingly through Davis and O'Keefe, not to mention Goodes. At present I am inclined to add Schmidt.

[Xie Shan]

Excellent analysis. I've often thought our lack of high-scoring games is due to our defensive midfield, but I don't think I could have put it anywhere nearly as well. Lack of height in defence has been our problem for years since Dunkley retired, our backline has often been smashed when the midfield has had an off day in the past.

I think part of why we've done so well this time is that this is the most skilful backline we've had in a while. C Bolton and Kennelly are genuine stars, and now we have the likes of Eski running off half back it adds a real dose of talent. It's almost a shame, because if we had invested in tall defenders, I dare say the players I've mentioned would probably be attacking midfielders we need.

I think the club still has a lot of faith vested in LRT, we probably don't have a lot of choice in the matter though. He can at least fill a hole these days reasonably well (when he's fit!), even if this is as a tagging/stopping CHB it frees up others to play different roles. Wouldn't write off Vogels yet either, but he will have to start showing some of the form that won him the B&F as a CHB in the Hampden League fairly soon.

I've often thought that if you combined the Swans and Eagles into one team, you would have the perfect footy side!! Talented forward line...brilliant midfield that can attack AND force sto..er, defend...skilful backline...dominant tap ruckmen (Imagine Cox and Spida together!)

[ScottH]

There was an article in the Hun this week about Sydney "strangling" other teams out of the game. They used the Brisbane game as an example, and how few possessions they had. It was an all time low for Brisbane, (around 210-220 IIRC).

Also the stats over the last few years have shown this to be true, oppositions have very low stats against the swans.

[ROK Lobster]

ROK are you getting more and more sensible?

Nah, you're just getting more intelligent.

[ROK Lobster]

ROK, I think this is well thought out and expressed. Makes a lot of sense to me. Who can add to our repertoire through the midfield? Perhaps increasingly through Davis and O'Keefe, not to mention Goodes. At present I am inclined to add Schmidt.

I think that O'Keefe plays pretty much a midfield - linking - role at the moment. Hall does too at times. How often do they take the ball on the wing and move it on towards fifty. Both have huge motors that allow them to really expand the half forward role, from centre wing to full forward.

[giant]

Kirk, our star midfileder, is a tagger. He plays his best footy when stopping, as he did last week. He is not really a creative player.

I don't necessarily agree with this - it's avery stereotyped view of Kirk. No doubt he's played some fabulous stopping roles over the years, but perhaps his greatest moment of (almost) triumph was the second half of last year's GF when he almost stole us a flag by some exceptional clearance work.

Interesting to hear Liam Pickering on League Teams last night say that while doing the boundary rider role at last week's game, he became aware of just how much Kirk directs play at the stoppages, telling the other midfielders what to do, very similar to Voss in Pickering's opinion. No one ever accused Voss of being a defensive player.

As to the rest of your commentary, it's certainly the case that in the early years Roos looked to Barry & Keneally for a lot of his run - the Swans may not have invented the "half back running the lines" concept but they probably came close to perfecting it. In recent years, our run has come much more from Goodes & then O'Keefe just providing superhuman run between HB & HF - once again, the way we've done this, together with our ability to do the "half court press" while in defence has been pretty innovative & something other clubs seem keen to replicate.

[hammo]

That certainly sums up what I've been thinking, hence my disappointment before the Lions game that we were discussing tagging options for Brisbane's inexperienced (yet talented) 21 year olds. It's as if even we don't back our midfield to win one on one battles against most sides without resorting to negative, defensive tactics.

At the moment our "best" midfielders rarely play there - Davis, Malceski, Kennelly, O'Keefe would probably all be key midfielders by now if they were at other clubs.