How this side can improve

[gloveski]

Love the way the guys are playing at the moment.
I think why this side can improve more is the pressure on for spots. When you have guys like Vespa, Smith,Richards,Bevan,Barlow,Rohan and when matchfit TDL pushing hard for selection if you have a couple of bad games you could quite easily find yourself in the reserves.And thats not even mentioning the couple of handy players we have injured at the moment

No weak links at the moment so hard to see in the short term who would be dropped for any of these guys but damn I am itching to see Vespa back in the ones

[liz]

There is heaps of improvement left. I've rewatched the first half of yesterday's game with the advantage of the nerves and tension taken away, and realised just how many basic skills errors the team made. It is to be expected that players will be rusty at the start of the season, and all unrealistic to expect they will ever reach perfection with disposals. But I do think there is huge scope for the existing 22 players to play better than yesterday - and they will need to because all other clubs will improve too as the season wears on.

I imagine that managing a squad where you have close to no injury is a very tough job. There is not a single player who was in our 22 yesterday who would be thinking that they are only in the team because someone else is missing and who therefore won't feel hard done by if they have to drop out in a few weeks. And yet we have half a dozen players currently in the magoos (and Bird on the sidelines) who have a right to believe that they can perform at senior level if and when they get their chance. Very tough to manage that so that reserves players feel they will get rewarded for continued good form, yet senior players don't start playing scared that they will lose their spot.

The "good news" is that at some point injuries will start to open doors for other players.

[goswannie14]

The "good news" is that at some point injuries will start to open doors for other players.

Great problem to have.

[Glenn]

As mentioned, still plenty of skill errors that can come back to haunt us against the Premiership contenders (ie round one vs St Kilda)

[wolftone57]

There were far too many skill errors in the first half & the worrying thing is that the majority came from very experienced players in the backline. Shaw, LRT & Craig Bolton all made some real clangers. This would be a game I think Ryce Shaw would want to forget as far as his disposal goes & LRT in the same boat. If the mistakes keep coming you are right there are always replacements waiting in the reserves & I don't think Roos will be nervous about bringing a few youngsters up to fill the gaps.

[Hartijon]

the backline can improve.LRT had a schocker up to 1/2 time and Shaw wasn't exactly accurate with his disposal.Jesse White seems to have not adjusted to having Bradshaw around and appears lost.He is not too good at grabbing the ball on a fast lead and we are not bombing it down to him.Maybe he needs to rotate as the 3rd ruckman?

[SCGonasunnyday]

Improve disposal efficiency, improve delivery into forward line, forwards can improve marking.

Very happy and excited to beat Adelaide in Adelaide but they are at the moment a bottom 4 side and played like one yesterday. We may have several honourable losses to the top 4 teams if we don't improve these things- but I think we will.

Incidentally in the next two years all clubs will lose depth to the two new teams, so our problem at the moment is perhaps the result of good forward planning - we may lose a vespa, white, meredith and hannebery to the new teams (just to pick 4 at random young players that it would kill me to lose) but every team will face this and we might just do better than most because of the depth deliberately obtained through topping up with mature recruits.

[rojo]

It is really quite amazing that the Swans are playing as well as they are. Not only are Seaby, Mummy, McGlynh, Kennedy, Bradshaw and Jetta new to the team, but Kennelly is still somewhat rusty and neither White nor Hanners have many senior games under their belts. That makes 9 players still adapting and being adapted to! There has got to be heaps of upside and improvement with each game they play.

[Bas]

Delivery to the forward line. It wasn't that good yesterday apart from McGlynn being covered in spiders in the forward 50.

[hammo]

Delivery to the forward line. It wasn't that good yesterday apart from McGlynn being covered in spiders in the forward 50.

It's going to be important this week as Richmond implement the uber flood.

[Jesse Richards]

As I see it we won against the Crows because we are fitter than we have been and we have some very skilled players, new and old. We have a resurgence of enthusiasm and lots of depth. And we played a bottom side. If we do not address the skill errors and the poor performance by several of our players as previously listed we will suffer badly for it in future games. And we have to ask: is it really the newer players who are shining, with far fewer skill errors and, if so, why?

[Benevolent Ert]

I don't think the new players are making "far fewer" skill errors than the longer term Swans, indeed both McGlynn and Kennedy's kicking can be questionable at times, and in recent years our style of play has required our players to be MORE precise with hitting targets, which in turn makes errors seem all the more glaring. McGlynn's excellent game yesterday was more a result of his hard running to a position where he didn't need to worry about accurate kicking - from memory all of his goals were from dead in front only a few metres out, which is exactly what the Saints did to us last week.

A real change I have noticed so far in 2010 is that the gameplan seems to have been changed to move the ball down the corridor whenever possible (at long last!) which means more shots taken from straight in front, which means better conversion rates. For 15 years I've watched us chip it around the boundary slowly ending up with a shot at goal on the tightest of angles. Going down the corridor also means getting the ball in quicker, before the opposition can flood back, therefore giving the forwards more space - as evidenced by McGlynn who had nobody near him all day.

The new players bring improvement to team structure. Having two competent ruckmen gives us more than Jolly could do on his own. Having Kennelly back and Malceski back in form, in addition to Shaw and Mattner gives us more run and carry, and the ability to break through opposition zones. The vast improvement of Grundy gives us the luxury of using Craig Bolton wherever we need him.

The competition for spots will help the side improve. The players who improve themselves over the course of the year will find themselves in the team come round 22, those who maintain the status quo may find themselves becoming very familiar with Canberra.

[Bayes30]

A real change I have noticed so far in 2010 is that the gameplan seems to have been changed to move the ball down the corridor

I think that has always been our game plan. It is only now (as in 2003-2006) that we have a sufficient number of players at half-back and in the midfield with the required speed and skill to apply that plan consistently. Playing an opposition with more than its share of old/slow and unfit players also helped on Sunday.

[Bas]

It's going to be important this week as Richmond implement the uber flood.

I saw the footage last night and the big advantage we have is that the SCG is shorter and therefore a player with longer kicking accuracy like Jetta might prove handy.

[liz]

I think that has always been our game plan. It is only now (as in 2003-2006) that we have a sufficient number of players at half-back and in the midfield with the required speed and skill to apply that plan consistently. Playing an opposition with more than its share of old/slow and unfit players also helped on Sunday.

I suspect that every team's number one game plan is:

a) win the ball cleanly out of the middle
b) kick it quickly to a leading forward who gets to shoot on no angle 30-40m out from goal
c) kick a goal
d) go back to a)

Damn annoying that the opposition gets in the way! (And to be fair, it might get a tad tedious if the plan worked to perfection.)