Season 2011 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[Cheer Squad]

Well, that's it for another year. The Cats are Premiers again, and Collingwood lose another Grand Final.

For us, it was an unusual sort of season, that's for sure.

The Good

1. We beat the Premiers - at their home ground - in convincing fashion, winning every quarter. It was our best win of the year, the first time we'd beaten them since 2006, and the first time at Kardinia Park since 1999. We also ended their 29 game unbeaten streak at home. Quite a feather in our cap.
2. We beat our old friends West Coast (4th), also at their home ground, the only team to do so.
3. We won a final in Melbourne for the first time since 2005. Always nice to get that monkey off your back.
4. We were genuinely competitve against our bete noir, Collingwood (2nd), for the first time in years.

The Bad

1. As good as our record against the top 4 was, we were convincingly defeated twice by Hawthorn (3rd), and Carlton (5th). Not good at all.
2. We still can't win at the MCG. It's got to be an attitude problem - please, get it fixed!
3. We aren't a competent wet weather team, something that became all too obvious at the year progressed.
4. Round 15, Adelaide. We should have won this game, and let it slip. Again, had to be an attitude problem.
5. Round 17, Fremantle. It wasn't a good year at the SCG anyway, but the loss against the Dockers was a very poor effort.

The Ugly

1. No prizes for guessing here. Round 21, Richmond. Our worst game of the year by the proverbial.
2. Our losing streak against Collingwood now sits at 10 straight defeats.

Kind of a mixed bag, really. Let's hope it portends an upswing in our fortunes next year.

[wolftone57]

I thought the ugly was our goal kicking & general field kicking this year. The bad was the dip in form at pivotal times of the year. The Good was being competitive against the top teams.

[mcs]

The Freo game should be under the ugly category. Not only for our crappy performance, but for the performance of several other characters on the ground as well. I agree with wolftone though - but I'd extend it more generally to all our skills, which at times were ok, but were generally pretty awful.

[Captain]

The emergence of Sam Reid is top of the 'Good' for me.

[Melbournehammer]

I am a glass half empty sort of fellow, so i would have to say that there were simply too many occasions where we kicked more points than goals and failed to actually get reward for effort. this simply places too much pressure on the backline (and also our fans to be honest) to cope with. if you look at those relatively few games where our kicking was good (and oddly geelong at cat park, and collingwood were critical games) we were not only competitive but looked like we could beat anyone in the league. if you look at games like st kilda and richmond where we won by circa ten points (literally !) we could have thrown away genuinely strong performances. So i would have to say that our kicking for goal must improve. from that a lot less pressure will exist on our field kicking.

and someone has got to tell grundy never to kick it short in the first quarter until he's got a really good feel for the game and the ball. his short passing is atrocious.

but for all that i still cant get over watching rohan running away from me at cat park and kicking the goal and him leaping around like a mad little kid. and the feeling of pride it gave to a lot of swans fans that have been down there over and over and come away feeling like we just cant compete with them. that moment will be the moment i take away from this season i think