Longmire's Coaching

[ScottH]

Totally agree, why Bird (our best tagger) was put in the vest is perplexing. His pre season form was better than most, and his role in the team is vital.

Since when does a tagger come on, for 1 quarter, and have an impact...ridiculous.

He should of been, and I imagine in future games will be, one of the first picked.

Yes, this was strange.
You need a player that can play flat out for one qtr (or so). An Impact player.
Bird has never been an impact player.

Someone like Brandon Jack should have got the vest.
His pace would have been extremely valuable at the end of that game.
Esp. given the demise of Rohan.

[mcs]

I cannot believe people at looking at Longmire's coaching as the problem, we have serious issues within the club. Just look at buddy in the last quarter when he had 3 opponents and tussled with his opponents for about 10 seconds, then got a 20 meter kick to three Collingwood players. Why was they no Swans players assisting him, why was the none running past giving him a option for a handball, why was there 3 collingwood players by themselves. The reason, well they decided to sit back and watch buddy. We will not make finals and this club will not win another premiership within the next ten years.

What odds will you offer me that we will win a premiership in the next ten years?

From what you've described in your post, that all sounds like team structure/coaching issues to me, not some sort of reflectin of 'issues' at the club.

I can fully comprehend, based on what we've seen in the first two weeks, why people might be questioning the coaching. we look utterly devoid of structure, and frankly of recognisable tactics at this stage of the season. Coaching ability is not solely based upon historical performances - it is also based on what we are seeing now.

[Plugger46]

Totally agree, why Bird (our best tagger) was put in the vest is perplexing. His pre season form was better than most, and his role in the team is vital.

Since when does a tagger come on, for 1 quarter, and have an impact...ridiculous.

He should of been, and I imagine in future games will be, one of the first picked.

I think we need to find a quicker tagger. All of the good sides have one.

We used Bird and O'Keefe in tagging roles in 2013. Both are very slow. That's probably OK against some midfielders but not the likes of Dangerfield, Ablett, Fyfe, Griffen etc. I wonder whether Rampe could do it. He's strong defensively and is also a good runner.

The one on Saturday night that baffled me was Reid going back. He took some nice marks early, we're crying out for a marking target up-forward and at the same time, he's our extra behind the footy. Meanwhile, Maxwell is sitting back having a picnic thinking it's 2010 again.

I think they're working out how best to use Franklin. I'm sure they know that sitting it on his head is not the answer. His hands on a lead are pretty good but he's never going to get it in a pack. We got a glimpse in the third quarter of what he's capable of. I suspect he'll be a far better player when Tippett is up and going.

We always look ordinary when Jack is quiet. Clubs have worked this out and he's just going to have to learn to deal with a hard-tag. I didn't notice too many of his teammates blocking for him the other night.

[mcs]

Longmire is a superb coach, and does not need to be questioned after two games that have been lost against determined opposition. Ross Lyon is not above Longmire because he is not a Premiership coach. Clarkson had some challenging years at the Hawks after the 2008 Premiership.

Longmire's first three seasons at the Swans are identical to Paul Roos's first three seasons at the Swans. Both won a flag, made a semi-final and made a preliminary final. People think that Paul Roos was the great turnaround specialist at the Swans, but the reality is that he inherited a solid competitive football team from Rodney Eade. Rodney Eade finished at the Swans half way through 2002 when the Swans lost around 6 games with margins less than 10 points.

Football teams lose games; Football teams have players down on form and confidence, Football teams have injuries, Football teams have bad days when things don?t work out.

We are having a down point in the season, but have plenty of time to recover. We may well be a 5-8 placed team this year, but if the team is in hot form in that latter part of the year and have no significant injuries, I would back us to be damaging in the Finals. People will argue that you need to be a top 4 team to have any chance of making the Grand Final, but I seriously believe that Collingwood would have won the flag in 2007, from outside the top 4, if they were not been beaten by Geelong by a solitary 6 points in the Preliminary Final. The key for Collingwood that year was they hit the finals in top form. With our talent we can do the same!

Statistics show that it is pretty much impossible to win a flag from outside the 4. of course, records and the like are there to be broken, but with Freo and the Hawks looking like the outstanding teams again this year, then it's not exactly going to be a good year for trying to win it from outside the 4. I have no doubt we would not be a team people would want to run into if we were coming from 5-8, but the chances of us winning 4 finals, inlcuding 3 away from home to win the flag from the bottom 4 of the eight are relatively remote.

[tasmania60]

Agree it was so frustrating,as armchair coaches it is so easy to critic is. I think the man not a fool but seems so slow to change things if it falls apart , seems like hes scared of making mistakes .

[magic.merkin]

We will not make finals and this club will not win another premiership within the next ten years.

And i'm out!....

[CJK]

Well played

[Melbournehammer]

Coaches structure their game plan during the off season.

They tweak it a little based on who they play against, but basically the same rules will apply.

We have played basically the same way regardless of personnel for about the past 6-8 years. we have a hardness around the ball, we use (overuse) handballs to clear congestion to hit a player running past to deliver the ball long to a forward and expect our crumbers to get to the fall of the ball. This basic game plan occurs regardless of whether the contest is in our defensive 50 or on the wing. when it works well we have runners bursting forward in waves from the back half, running the ball through the centre corridor and hitting leading forwards or going over leading forwards to fast outside midfielders whose job it is to get to the fall of the ball.

when it goes pear shaped (see hawks and pies in particular) we have two players outside fifty waiting for the hurried kick doing their best to spoil the ball over the boundary and everyone is so accountable that they dont leave the defensive fifty for fear of letting their man be the one who kicks the goal. - since that rarely happens the ball just comes back into a crowded defensive area.

However I do think some really clear things have occurred. Firstly we aren't bursting from packs with anything like the regularity in the past. This is the absence of goodes and jack. no-one else in our team has ever really been able to burst through a pack. Secondly the run from behind has stopped. i actually put this down to losing mattner, but also the failures of malceski and shaw to regularly run off hb. rampe cant hit the target that it is about 25 metres away on the run but can kick a sixty metre bomb. he isnt a give and go sort of player.

but the game plan has basically become so defensive that kicking a score is a problem. The port game last year has been replayed time and time and time again. we cant clear the ball and despite determined dogged resistance we simply cant kick a winning score.

for horse to change things would be to completely change the game plan from the past few seasons. it needs to happen but it needed to happen during the off season. instead we got buddy which was supposed to be a substantial improvement on jesse (and may yet be) but sacrificed mummy for derickx. what actually needed to happen was to find another midfielder like jack, dangerfield, ablett and goodes to burst through the middle of packs. we (I think) assumed that our problem was our forward line because it has been so poor for a while. i think we knew we were slow which is why cunningham and jack and towers have all been brought in. But they realised towers wasnt going to be able to replace mattner/shaw. but we needed an inside midfielder who can burst through defences. that opens space up on the outside of the pack because it forces those defenders who sit on the outside of packs to be drawn to the contest for fear of having the player burst away from them.

such players dont grow on trees.

this is a bit of rant. the short version is that we wont change the game style unless panicked, but we should be giving panic a bit of a thought at the moment

[dimelb]

I suspect there has been some minor tweaking. Rampe's goal was a nice piece of slingshot Mark 2; Jetta and Mal were handy and pounced on the opportunity; Buddy's bomb was exactly the sort of thing we expect to see from him.
Perhaps our worst mistake was to take Reid out of the forward 50; he was the other tall target while we had a resting ruckman, but he needed to stay there rather than doing the swing thing, especially when we don't have Tippett or Goodes on the park. And it would have helped make Maxwell accountable.

[Meg]

I agree with much of Melbournehammer's post above, but two comments particularly:

1. "but the game plan has basically become so defensive that kicking a score is a problem. The port game last year has been replayed time and time and time again. we cant clear the ball and despite determined dogged resistance we simply cant kick a winning score."

And note that the Port game is the one in which we lost Goodes - who hasn't played since.

2. And also: "we wont change the game style unless panicked, but we should be giving panic a bit of a thought at the moment"

Even more so if we lose to the Crows!

[Rod_]

While a couple of wins would have been excellent. As long as we defeat Collingwood in September I will remain a happy man.

We can't be predictable in March. Our style will have to change to meet the needs of what other clubs are doing.

Hope we can get a few wins behind us by round 6 3 wins and 3 losses will do!

Rod_

[Plugger46]

I don't think Collingwood will be participating in September. That's the concern for me, losing two very winnable games. You don't want to be playing your best footy at this stage but you need to be banking wins.

[Meg]

Which coach said this after weekend's matches?

"You could see the hesitation, even when we got out in space there was just no one to kick it to, so certainly that is having a huge bearing on your ability to score. It probably doesn?t have that big an impact on your ability to do basic things. That is my job Monday to separate those two components, the fact that we don?t have a forward line ? what does that mean from a ball movement point of view.??

[liz]

Roos?

[Meg]

Got it in one Liz! Ironic isn't it?