GAME DAY thread Swans v Cats Round 23

[wolftone57]

All this negativity. Lighten up everyone. The SWANS finished 3rd on the table. We have a home final no matter what the result is in Adelaide next week. Perk up soon and keep believing CHEER CHEER and ONWARDS to VICTORY.

Sorry but I can't see us beating Adelaide in Adelaide, I know Footy Park and in a Final the Crowd is worth 10 Free Kicks and 5 goals. Very hard there and they are playing very well with two great forwards. How many great forwards do we have and how many good crumbers do we have? They have Porplyzia, Callinan & Petrenko. Do we count Jude, Benny & Kizza if we do we have good crumbers but they don't actually play below the big guys like the Adelaide boys. We need to get them to do that.

If we play Cats again we will be beaten again. We need to look to next year I think. I always thought next year would be a better bet than this year anyway. I would think that was the plan anyway, that is why we recruited, Mitchell, Brown, Lamb, Biggs, Cunningham & Lockyer

[wolftone57]

the pressure will be on the crows that's for sure, we need to work on our forward structure and our continued reliance on bombing long and wide to packs when coming out from defence, it seems to be our only bail out option when the heat is on. Hawthorn last week and Geelong this week picked us off way to easy, why you would bomb to a pack that involves Harry Taylor is beyond me

That long bomb is hopeless and will never win big games especially if they have good Talls who will out-mark you. Rielly will have a ball if we do that!

[mcs]

Disappointing performance today - but there is plenty of hope for next week and beyond. Our last month has been disappointing, but today was our only really 'poor' performance of the lot, and one of just three this season (St Kilda in Melbourne and Richmond in Melbourne being the other). Just couldn't really get going today, and when we did we were quite wasteful in front of goals. What did frustrate me was the run we generated late in the game when it was all over. I know Geelong dropped off a bit, but where was a bit of that play on at all costs and running footy earlier in the game when it could have made a difference.

We can most definitely beat Adelaide next week if we play anywhere near our best, and we play very close to our best three times in September, then we will go almighty close. Lets hope today is a good timely wake up call and the boys pull their finger out from here. Just remember what happened to the loser of the Swans Geelong Rd 23 clash last year and you'll know there is plenty of hope yet!

(Saying all that, does not mean I wasn't mightily frustrated watching the game today!)

#BELIEVE - SWANS 2012!!!

[Dirtyburt]

Sorry but I can't see us beating Adelaide in Adelaide, I know Footy Park and in a Final the Crowd is worth 10 Free Kicks and 5 goals. Very hard there and they are playing very well with two great forwards. How many great forwards do we have and how many good crumbers do we have? They have Porplyzia, Callinan & Petrenko. Do we count Jude, Benny & Kizza if we do we have good crumbers but they don't actually play below the big guys like the Adelaide boys. We need to get them to do that.

If we play Cats again we will be beaten again. We need to look to next year I think. I always thought next year would be a better bet than this year anyway. I would think that was the plan anyway, that is why we recruited, Mitchell, Brown, Lamb, Biggs, Cunningham & Lockyer

Your obsession with unproven ressies is tedious. Note: you are not the only person who goes to regular reserves games.
Swans to beat Adelaide at footy park and cruise in with Reid and smiff back.

[DA_Swan]

Played like a team happy to just be in the top four - will be better next as the coach will have the perfect reason to get stuck into them - dont know what is wrong with Goodes but no doubt we will told at seasons end - Geelong were so much the score board did'nt show their true dominance - we'll see how good our coach is now and hopefully Smith back for next week

[Swanner]

GAME DAY thread Swans v Cats Round 23

Jetta is playing like last year. Seems to have lost pace. Something's hasn't been right for a month. Doesn't look like a man enjoying his footy.

In general we lost our run and hardness at the footy. A tired group of players.

The more I think about it those two awful decisions last week by the umpires has taken the wind out of them. They fought so hard and played so well and to have two bad umpiring decisions gift the game to your opponent and the minor premiership must be pretty demoralizing.

They need to toughen up and get some belief back.

We need them to get back to being positive and believing in themselves, we are a better team than Adelaide and have played as good football as the hawks this year - anyway didn't we win the premiership from third?

[giant]

Oh well we are saving ourselves money on week one finals tickets :-)

As it turns out, the missus and I had already booked a weekend away in McLaren Vale next weekend - now I have to decide whether I want to mix "footy business" with pleasure....

Not a great effort, but plenty of upside. Wonder why they took off Walsh who had seemed excellent to me? Hopefully, we'll see a rejuvenated effort next week, we're entirely capable of winning that game at our best.

[dimelb]

Cats played better than we did today. They killed us out of the centre, were generally more accurate by hand and foot, looked for their forwards instead of kicking long in hope. Our skills were down, except for McVeigh (who I thought was our best), Armstrong, whose field kicking was good, and some others who were patchy.
We missed Reid big time; our structure seemed to disappear without him. We also missed Smithy. Having said that,the replacements were OK in Walsh's case (and good experience for him) and better than OK in Armstrong's case.
Hanners had a horrid game, should have ended up with the red vest, Jetts didn't get enough of the ball to do much although his field kicking again was good, Kennedy worked hard. I wished I could lip-read when Horse was giving Alex J a talking-to at the third break!
The umpiring was pretty ordinary but that had nothing to do with the loss.
We will do better next week; I doubt we could do worse.

[Red]

We need to have a strategy against Geelong that doesn't involve bombing the ball into the forward line. They have just about the best tall defenders in the AFL, but are a bit vulnerable to speed. Goodes, Reid and LRT had a total of 5 marks between them the last time we played them at the SCG, and their defense took an enormous number of marks. We would be much better off kicking the ball along the ground and making it a ground level contest where we do much better. No team ever seems to do this, even when they are clearly up against a much better defensive team in the air. Maybe because it looks bad.

This. Thought this was a very astute observation of our problem. And like Lugwig I have wondered why we haven't taken this approach in this situation?

We just don't have the ariel skills of teams like the Cats. And yet we continue to bomb the ball long to midfield from defence, and long to F50 from midfield, straight into the hands of strong-marking opposition players while the best we seem to do is try and put body pressure on (but not often enough today to cause a spill).

And it happens again and again and again. And we keep losing possession, have to chase and defend, get tired, bomb it away, rinse & repeat.

WTF not try -- for 1 qtr at least -- on attack & rebound to kick it low into space, let it bounce and take our chances with a ground contest rather than an ariel one? Even if it goes to the opposition the ball is live and we're a chance of taking it back. I reckon we're much better at stoppages and tackling than contested marking.

I thought it a bit rich of Horse to give Alex a spray at 3/4 time. Given our total lack of an alternative game plan, one to try and bring it back on level terms, he could've given himself one.

[Dirtyburt]

This. Thought this was a very astute observation of our problem. And like Lugwig I have wondered why we haven't taken this approach in this situation?

We just don't have the ariel skills of teams like the Cats. And yet we continue to bomb the ball long to midfield from defence, and long to F50 from midfield, straight into the hands of strong-marking opposition players while the best we seem to do is try and put body pressure on (but not often enough today to cause a spill).

And it happens again and again and again. And we keep losing possession, have to chase and defend, get tired, bomb it away, rinse & repeat.

WTF not try -- for 1 qtr at least -- on attack & rebound to kick it low into space, let it bounce and take our chances with a ground contest rather than an ariel one? Even if it goes to the opposition the ball is live and we're a chance of taking it back. I reckon we're much better at stoppages and tackling than contested marking.

I thought it a bit rich of Horse to give Alex a spray at 3/4 time. Given our total lack of an alternative game plan, one to try and bring it back on level terms, he could've given himself one.

Yep just what you need going into finals, change your game style that got you to 3rd on the ladder.

Settle people

[Red]

Yep just what you need going into finals, change your game style that got you to 3rd on the ladder.

Settle people

Sure, ok. Take a deep breath, calm down and play the exactly same way as the past fortnight.

[msb]

Disappointed but really you aren't gonna win down at that @@@@hole of a place....IMO I think Alex Johnson is a becoming a liability in defence, we can't afford turnovers and players not being manned up, frustrating. Other than that I'm still baffled as to why Morton was dropped, he would of been handy in an otherwise dysfunctional forward line today. Onto next week and IF we play at our best and have Reid back I think we'll beat Adelaide. All is not lost, we can still win this thing, must win next week though.

[liz]

Will be interesting to see what they do with Armstrong next week. Assuming Smith's ailment is minor (anyone know why he pulled out) he'll be an automatic inclusion. But Armstrong was definitely one of our best two or three today.

[wolftone57]

Your obsession with unproven ressies is tedious. Note: you are not the only person who goes to regular reserves games.
Swans to beat Adelaide at footy park and cruise in with Reid and smiff back.

Excuse me but I am talking about next year if you managed to by any chance read rudimentary English. Why don't you bother to read the thread properly? You obviously just skim or don't bother or are incapable of discerning what people are saying! If YOU/BURT looked very closely I say;

I always thought next year would be a better bet than this year anyway. I would think that was the plan anyway, that is why we recruited, Mitchell, Brown, Lamb, Biggs, Cunningham & Lockyer


Does this make it any clearer for you or do I have to spell it out!

[Red]

Will be interesting to see what they do with Armstrong next week. Assuming Smith's ailment is minor (anyone know why he pulled out) he'll be an automatic inclusion. But Armstrong was definitely one of our best two or three today.

I hope & pray Smith's ailment is/was minor. Would've loved him to playing on Chapman today (as would've AJ).