Game Thread - Sydney V Dogs

[floppinab]

That said, I think yesterday was the first game I've watched all year where the umpires have been almost invisible - which is the sign they had a pretty good game.

Weren't bad though there were a lot of inconsistencies with in the back in a tackle situation. For the one Cooney got in front of goal there were four or five others that were let go, the most obvious being the one Bird got nailed into the turf with a few minutes to go.

[liz]

One other thing, none of the players showed up at the post match function I was at. The consensus was they were getting an old fashioned roasting by the coaching staff.

I was sitting at Gosh at Fox Studios barely an hour after the game when Roos wandered past with his boys in tow. So if they were still getting a roast, he must have delegated it to someone else!

[NMWBloods]

But they are three teams with exquisite footskills. It is the tactic that is working or the implementation of it? Obviously both but if you do it without decent footskills, I am not convinced it is going to be that effective.

Trying to get the ball into a crowded F50 and hit a target is not going to work enormously well without good foot skills either though.

[NMWBloods]

Whenever we're on the wrong end of a free kick count, people (rightly) point out that the number is irrelevant. It's whether you get your share of softies and how many completely bloopers you're on the wrong end of. So the raw number of frees is irrelevant.

It's never stopped people here quoting the raw numbers when they are against us.

[swansrule100]

Trying to get the ball into a crowded F50 and hit a target is not going to work enormously well without good foot skills either though.

plus the way we play of late we turn it over anyway so id rather it be kicked down quick to our forward line and turned over than on our half back flank.

I feel we have a style that worked in 05 and 06 i spose and clubs have figured it out and we havent changed.

We have actually gone deeper and deeper into this negative style, where we want to hold a team for basically three quarters than win with a burst

[ROK Lobster]

I was sitting at Gosh at Fox Studios barely an hour after the game when Roos wandered past with his boys in tow.

He'd been there for 2 hours by then.

[Triple B]

Two things I didn't like in the match (excluding the loss itself) which I don't think has been mentioned previously (if it has apologies), but when Bird got smashed and was down, the Bulldogs player that pushed him down afterwards as if he was faking. Personally I wanted to smash him.

Oh and a word to the AFL, yes we know you want to watch the Swans interchange carefully, but did you really have to have 2 people right next to the Swans and only 1 to the Bulldogs for 3 quarters of the match.

That was Callan. Pretty poor form.

On the interchange, at least twice yesterday we had periods of 15-20 secs with only 17 players on the field. They seemed so paranoid, probably rightly so, that the interchanges were slow and cumbersome as they checked and double checked that everything was hunky dory, players stepping on then back off looking to the bench as if doing a last minute head count before going on.

[Triple B]

Scotch from a can - that's an insult in itself!

I was thinking EXACTLY the same thing when I read it.

[Triple B]

That said, I think yesterday was the first game I've watched all year where the umpires have been almost invisible - which is the sign they had a pretty good game.

Agree with that completely.

I reckon I yelled at the Swans ineptness, in particular Benny, more than I yelled at the scumps ineptness yesterday.

[stellation]

players stepping on then back off looking to the bench as if doing a last minute head count before going on.

I noticed that every single one of them did that, I imagine it must have been a team rule for the day.

[gossipcom]

On the interchange, at least twice yesterday we had periods of 15-20 secs with only 17 players on the field.

That was largely due to the AFL guys being there making sure they had received who interchange information before they actually did the interchange.

The thing about that peeved me off was, what happens if it was a situation where there was 30 seconds left in the match and we wanted to make an interchange but due to the AFL people we couldn't make the interchange because it wasn't cleared. That's the thing that a few of us mentioned yesterday.

[BSA5]

Sheesh, I just watched the game this morning, and really, the way people were going on here, I expected to see a bottom 4 side out there. I mean really, we weren't that bloody bad. The Dogs were just really, really good. People are complaining about inaccuracy, well, we kicked 14.10. That isn't bad at all. The Dogs were just extraordinarily efficient. We comprehensively beat them in all facets of the game except on the scoreboard. There were far more positives to come out of that game than negatives.

[NMWBloods]

Yep - as I said elsewhere I don't think it was a disaster. It just showed we are a fair bit off the top teams in skill level and we're solidly in the middle group of teams.

[Ludwig]

Putting our recent performances into perspective, we clearly have been a bit unlucky with losing Barry Hall just at a time when we were rebuilding our forward line around his return to form.

We dropped Davis, because we though we could with Hall back in form, which may have been deserved, but didn't help his confidence. Now that we could use an accurate kick for goal, he's neither kicking or tacking well. But look forward to his return at some stage.

Grundy gets injured just at the time when he can show what he can do as a key target up forward and not living in Hall's shadow. Should still get a few games before Hall's return if his foot comes good.

Playfair is in the team for exactly the reason I think we got him: A stop gap measure in case of injury before Hall's likely long term replacement clearly emerges.

It has not been helpful that ROK's goal kicking has been so poor this year. But he now looks more at home as a midfielder than a true forward target.

In the 3 games since Hall's absence, we went from Davis to White to Playfair as the hopeful answer to our forward line structure. Circumstances have caught Roos a bit off guard for solutions, but a favourable schedule over the next few weeks may allow us to muddle through.

The reason we've managed 3 ? wins is mainly due mainly to Jack and Moore performing so well this year as well as the improvement in McVeigh. We could have really been exposed in the midfield as well this year if not for the newbies.

We are clearly a team in transition, and can only challenge in September with a favourable injury run from here on. If you put Malceski and Schmidt back in the midfield we suddenly look a good kicking team. Add Hall and a New Nick Davis and the Swans can still be a top 4 team.

We got to play a lot of youngsters without much damage so far. I don't think we can be too critical at this stage. But we do need a bit of luck to get our campaign back on track.

[BSA5]

Yep - as I said elsewhere I don't think it was a disaster. It just showed we are a fair bit off the top teams in skill level and we're solidly in the middle group of teams.

Yeah, you are meant to be the "negative" one, but compared to the way some people have gone on you've been all sunshine and lollipops.