What should we do?

[NMWBloods]

The man we need in the middle or further forward is Tadgh Kennelly. His natural evasive skills from his Irish football completely befuddles the opposition - particularly defenders. Who can forget his 360 degree spin before launching a goal from 50 out - 2005 I think against Brisbane. It just came naturally.
His flair is wasted down back.

I used to say that he should be on the wing. I still think he'd make a wonderful winger (and far more suited to that than in the middle), however given the style of football now, you need someone coming off half back to give you run. I think he is better placed for us to do that, so now I'm more inclined to think he should be left at HBF, rather than put on the wing. Of the two, I would probably think Malceski is better suited for us to move up into the midfield. Still, if things aren't working, the option to move Kennelly up into the midfield should be considered, but it never is.

[swansrule100]

id just like to see some changes when we are down and need to come back, like moving davis to the backline to get a kick, or moving leo or craig bolton forward, i dunno exactly what, depends on the night. But just something that shows we have a few different line ups and plans and flexibility on game day.

[originalswan]

I was at the game and must say that the last quarter was very impressive.

So my solution is - Get a decent psychologist to have a chat to the players about their fear of the Number 4, that is 4 Quarters!

Perhaps if they looked upon the game as just one game of 120 Minutes!

[smasher]

We have started previous seasons poorly and I don't think we need to panic yet as we were beaten by a pretty good TEAM.I emphasis the word team as i feel alot of Swans are playing for themselves and are displaying some selfish acts.A champion team will always beat a team of champions.

[Bloody Hell]

3. Based on last night's performance, the only thing structurally wrong with the team is that we don't have enough depth in the backline to provide additional flexibility if individual blokes are getting beaten by their direct opponent. That flaw creates the additional problem that we can't release the white-hot Malceski into the middle to carve it up out of the stoppages, without losing the run off the half-back line that we rely on. These are both hopefully temporary problems that can be alleviated as LRT, Kennelly and Dempster return.

I agree with the sentiment, though Roos obviously doesn't value these type of players (can be covered by smaller players). I cannot even begin to fathom the thinking behind leaving Vogels out. When players in his position are given opportunities (usually through injury) they have to take them. I can't see him not being ready for a shot given the current circumstances and if that's the case why is he on the list?

[Bloody Hell]

Further to the above>

I think it may be Roos inability...or more accurately his lack of experience coaching with injuries. His selection choices don't make as much sense as they possibly could....to me anyway.

[NMWBloods]

Q1 they were too good, we barely had our hands on the ball.

Disposals were 77-73 in Q1, so we had enough of the ball - we just butchered it.

[Nico]

I think so too. Given that he's in the team, I'd like to see him spend more time at centre bounces. He's effected more clean centre square bounces than Jude I reckon - ie ones that actually count and set something up, he seems to try to get a disposal off before he falls over rather than the other way around, and his tackling looks good.

I've also been impressed by the reliability of his kicking. He's no Malceski but he can spot an option and usually hit it, including over reasonable distances.

He needs to do more of what he's already doing, but that will come if he gets the game time and experience.

I said this a couple of weeks ago, Schmidt V Bolton at centre bounces and got howled down.

[smasher]

The old saying "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" may apply here with Kennelly.It was apparant on Sat that the defence was all over the shop and we got very little run from it.

[giant]

Disposals were 77-73 in Q1, so we had enough of the ball - we just butchered it.

I'm surprised at that stat - the feeling I got was that they belted us at the stoppages, moved the ball quickly and long & we were generally second to the ball all qr. Compared to that other Q1 drubbing vs WCE, I thought we had less real scoring chances & so it wasn't really a case of us butchering it so much as never having the chance to butcher it.

Any idea what the respective I50 count was for the 1st qr?

[hammo]

I'm surprised at that stat - the feeling I got was that they belted us at the stoppages, moved the ball quickly and long & we were generally second to the ball all qr. Compared to that other Q1 drubbing vs WCE, I thought we had less real scoring chances & so it wasn't really a case of us butchering it so much as never having the chance to butcher it.

Any idea what the respective I50 count was for the 1st qr?

There was certaintly less pressure on the Kangaroos when they had the ball

[NMWBloods]

Any idea what the respective I50 count was for the 1st qr?

Don't recall it, but I reckon it would have been around 20-10.

[ScottH]

Don't recall it, but I reckon it would have been around 20-10.

Ours might be a bit higher, as their O50 seemed to be quite high.

[liz]

The old saying "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" may apply here with Kennelly.It was apparant on Sat that the defence was all over the shop and we got very little run from it.

I think the team and pretty much every fan knew exactly what we have with Kennelly before he wasn't there. We witnessed it at the start of last year, and I think Roos came out and labelled Kennelly as the third or so most important player to the side structurally.

I'm not sure it was entirely down to Kennelly's absence that the defence "was all over the shop" - a lack of midfield pressure was at least as much of a contributory factor. But certainly the run was lacking, something we were predicting all last week.

[top40]

What should we do?

We must start to improve out starts.

Here's a statistic that Paul Roos and the football department are no doubt fully aware of:

From Rounds 1 to 6, the Swans first half percentage is a terrible 81.2%; whilst their second half percentage for the exact same matches is 156.8%.

Taking aside the recent SCG/Melbourne game, we've kicked just 20 first half goals this season in 10 first half quarters. Now that's the exactly the same number of goals as Geelong kicked in the first half of just one game last Sunday.

Quite frankly, as a Swans supporter I am sick and tired of watching us play catch up football. And the reality is that with the exception of occasional games such the Gabba match against the Lions in early 2005, we rarely actually get the four points.