Matthew Laidlaw

[BSA5]

Ablett's a reasonable tagger, but not much in attack.

J Bolton is arguably not in our best 22.

I'm not sure why Fosdike would suddenly be starting when he hasn't been for the past couple of years. He used to start.

How does Bird have a better claim - from a couple of pre-season matches? Is Mattner in midfield and Laidlaw at HB better than Bird in midfield and Mattner at HB?

And O'Dwyer after one game? Surely not ready?

We don't need Ablett to attack. We need him to do a job, and he does it, really really well.

Bolton is in our best 22. You clearly don't like Bolton, and disagree with me, but I reckon we'd be foolish not to have him in our 22 at he start of the year.

I'm not sure why Fosdike has been playing off the bench for the last couple of years. Put him back as a starter on the wing.

How does Bird have a better claim? Bird looks like a bloody good player. The Swans coaching staff seem to think he has what it takes to play a fair bit of senior footy this year, and I'm not going to disagree with them.

And I already admitted I was getting ahead of myself with O'Dwyer.

[Cheese]

I think people don't really understand Mattner.

The guy is a booming kick, terrific tackler, reasonably quick, loves to take people on & backs himself.

His best year was played on a wing in I think 2005 or 2006, when many believed he was worthy of all Australian. He is a good HBF who suits our game plan, however his best position I believe is the wing.

especially on the SCG with the small wings, his booming kick would really thrust the ball into our fowards.

[BSA5]

As I say, I think Ablett does a reasonable job, but we do need midfield attackers. Calling Ablett a midfielder means we are potentially one attacking midfielder short.

J Bolton can (and will) start the year to see whether he has finished, but is best his past him.

Fosdike on one wing and Mattner on the other would suit.

Not much solid argument for Bird.

Not when I had made that comment you hadn't on O'Dwyer though, hence why I said it.

But not every midfield is comprised of six attacking midfielders. You need to put your defensive midfielders somewhere. What you said doesn't make any sense.

I think we agree on Bolton, so let's skip that.

Fosdike on one wing and Goodes/Barlow on the other would suit better, IMHO.

No less solid really than the argument for Laidlaw.

And my bad, we posted at about the same time, so I guess you didn't see my post.

[smasher]

I recall Laidlaw coming to Melbourne for his first match.He came across as an extremely confident young bloke and I feel this confidence will keep him in good stead for the future.His form was hard to judge as he played in the rain and didn't do much.I recall that I was disappointed but put that down to the weather.You can't judge a player on one game and that is all the young fellow got.We must stop this practice of bringing in young players for a sniff then dropping them.

[Claret]

Most teams have mainly attacking midfielders. Few have more than one or two taggers - we have Kirk. It's about time we went down the attacking path rather than the boring defensive one.

Winning games of football is about scoring more points than the other team, not just scoring lots of points.

If you want to support a team that doesn't play "boring defensive" football then try Carlton.

[Mr_Juicy]

west coast game plan is really no different to ours

[Claret]

west coast game plan is really no different to ours

Exactly. And both sides have multiple defensively minded midfielders - Stengein, Jones, Ling, Rooke etc.

[Claret]

Both West Coast and Geelong aim to get the ball first and get it into their forward line quickly.

..... and Richmond and St Kilda and Sydney and the Heathcote Hawks. Every team tries to do it. Some are better at stopping their opposition at doing it successfully than others.

If you want to take away most of the defensive aspects of our midfield then you might as well hand back the 2005 premiership. That premiership was based on shutting the other team down (as was West Coast's tilts in 2005/06). Some neutral supporters might call it boring, but it's hard to argue with its effectiveness.

We'd all love to win pretty, but if it came to to being pretty or winning then I'd take winning anyday.

It appears that the Swans' match committee seems to agree.