1st QF Swans v Giants

[dejavoodoo44]

You mean like tonight?

I think we lack the tall defenders to combat the "monster" forwards (ie talls) especially when there are 2 of them. We're great (miserly) against the slightly smaller (ie less tall) forward lines, but the better sides (including us) have 1 or 2 big forwards & our defenders don't seem to always have the height or physicality to match them.

Yes, before they lost to the Eagles and missed the double chance, I rated them as our biggest premiership threat. Mainly because of their forwards. Hopefully our midfield can get on top, as the loss of Sloane the other week, showed that they have a slight lack of depth there.
Though I suppose one reason for optimism, is that up until last year, it was very rare for the qualifying final losers to go out in straight sets.

[Meg]

Many of us were puzzled about players slipping over. Someone who went out for kick-to-kick has posted on 'The Roar' that he found there were "Holes the size of dinner plates infilled with sand that had been sprayed green to match the turf."!

Oh thank goodness that was the end of playing on that shoddy surface.

[Industrial Fan]

Seemed to only be swans slipping over though?

[Doctor]

This board consists of the biggest bunch of whiners and whingers.

It is finals footy with a prelim in the line. FOOTY.... Is tough and in 2005 and 2012 the swans won by being toughest. They need to b toughest again today.

And both teams are allowed to have supporters. ( supporters support not bag their players like half of u )

How is stating that the opposition supporters were being disgusting either whinging or whining? Snarky told me at 1/2 time what some of the comments were and I agree that they were horrendous. Noone is saying that an opposition supporter shouldn't barrack for their team. I don't know how you took that from this post.

[MattW]

Seemed to only be swans slipping over though?

Yep. Either Jack Riewoldt or Jordan Lewis mentioned the other night that it's ground where you need to wear screw-ins. Did we?

[Doctor]

Yes, yes, yes.

The pea-hearted loser is such a liability. We already have a small forward in Papley. McGlynn just creates a problem for the rest of the team. Hope we bring in either Towers or Cunningham and drop McGlynn hard.

Given the Giants ability to get acres, you'd think Longmire would have gone with Cunningham or Towers. It baffled me with the space GWS kept creating for themselves. You'd think the swans would be onto it.

Hopefully this guilt and sentiment towards McGlynn finally ends and he never plays another game in the red and white.

Boo hoo. He missed the 2012 Grand Final and cried. I doubt we could have even won it with him in the side.

This is so incredibly disrespectful to a player who has given everything to this team for many years. Yes he had a poor game today but he does not deserve vitriol like this.

[Doctor]

Positives -

- I'd rather we'd have won today but I do feel that we have a path through to the GF that is navigable. Adelaide are a wonderful team but it's on our home patch and I'd like to think we'll bounce back. After that, I think we can beat Geelong based on what I saw last night. I felt the Giants were always our toughest potential match up going into the finals and so it proved today.
- Aliir - plenty of players fluffed their lines today but not him. A genuine star in the making.
- Grundy - Did anyone see Patton do anything today? Reg was outstanding. I made a point of watching him directly on several occasions and he was just so professional in the way he played his position.

Feel free to add more. I have a couple of other possibles but I'd rather share it around.

[MattW]

Positives -

- I'd rather we'd have won today but I do feel that we have a path through to the GF that is navigable. Adelaide are a wonderful team but it's on our home patch and I'd like to think we'll bounce back. After that, I think we can beat Geelong based on what I saw last night. I felt the Giants were always our toughest potential match up going into the finals and so it proved today.
- Aliir - plenty of players fluffed their lines today but not him. A genuine star in the making.
- Grundy - Did anyone see Patton do anything today? Reg was outstanding. I made a point of watching him directly on several occasions and he was just so professional in the way he played his position.

Feel free to add more. I have a couple of other possibles but I'd rather share it around.

Here's some:
- I agree with your first point. It's not over.
- I thought Hannebery kept trying and performed at standard.
- Jones coming back will be really helpful, we could have used his power running from the back today.

It was interesting that Aliir played forward towards the end of the game (less effectively).

[Meg]

I've sent a tweet to AFL asking for a review of neither mark nor free kick to Heeney in the 3rd quarter with #AFLwhistleblowers to try to get it on Monday's umpiring video. I know it is water under the bridge by then but still .... Anyone else like to do the same? I think the choice of what is looked at is influenced by the amount of angst that is shown (judging by past comments on the video).

[bloodsbigot]

This is so incredibly disrespectful to a player who has given everything to this team for many years. Yes he had a poor game today but he does not deserve vitriol like this.

Don't care how good he's played for us. He's a weakness to our side and the club should always come before being sentimental. Horse made a massive @@@@ up selecting him against Richmond and today due to what I feel is sentimentality. Hope he's played his last game.

Thanks for the service McGylnn, but you're a list clogger now. Time to hang up the boots and move on.

[bloodsbigot]

For some reason I'm not feeling too distraught about this loss. Swans never play well after a bye and they had a soft run in to the finals. From now its no more rests and back to the SCG why by god they belong. Watching the replay I was surprised that that we were still in the game with just 5 mins to go in the 3rd then the Heeney non-mark call followed by the Rampe HTB changed the whole momentum.
Better to get the 'bad' game out of the way now, right, right? Rather than wait till the grand final ala 2014.
Bring on the crows!

As much as it pains me to admit, I'm also a bit ho-hum about our loss too, as I knew we would have had to have gone through Hawthorn in order to get to the Grannie. This is almost a preferable path to get there in my opinion. I was almost expecting a loss.

Mike Fitzpatrick wasn't going to let GWS fail today, and GWS always play out of their skins against us.

If we can't beat Adelaide next week, quite frankly, we don't deserve to be there. They lost to West Coast without Nicnat ffs. On our home ground, we should trounce them.

[bloodsbigot]

On the Kennedy hit, I think too many of our players went down in the first quarter for it to just be a 'coincidence.' I think it was GWS's strategy to take out our players from the start.

Johnson and Mumford should be suspended, but they won't be because the AFL won't allow it.

- - - Updated - - -

Let's forget about this dismal performance and look towards next year. The boys will not make GF so don't make any plans. It's time to talk about trades and delistings again. It's more relevant.

Love your optimism.

I'm quietly confident we'll bounce back and make the Grannie. The crows aren't that good. We matched up on them fine earlier in the year at AO.

GWS are just one of those teams that lift against us (See Richmond). GWS were soundly beaten by Collingwood ffs.

- - - Updated - - -

Harry Cunningham would have been unsighted today. Way too hard for him. Towers is a better bet than McGlynn.

He never seems to do anything, but I think he's more of a 'coaches player' and does more things off the ball than we may otherwise think. Like plugging holes, etc.

I don't think he's a glory hog or feels he has anything to prove. Just a good dude. Otherwise Horse would just be an idiot. He must see something he does that we don't see.

[KTigers]

We were sitting in a bay that was 95% Giants fans, and my favourites were a couple of guys a few rows behind us that complained about every decision that went against the Giants, and I mean every single one of them. Every time the ball went out of bounds they called out "deliberate". At one point one guy screamed out that the game was rigged against them because of the "Eastern Suburbs umpires". GWS were five goals up at this point. In the last quarter when lot of Swans fans were leaving, about half the bay stood up and mock waved goodbye to them. They were just footy fans being footy fans.
We just had a poor game. As good as we are, we are not going to win every game, and GWS are a very good team. There are very few weak links in their game. When they lose, it's because they didn't "bring it". Same as us. If we are off by 5% against a contender like them then we
will lose. I think we will beat Adelaide and then Geelong at the MCG, and likely play GWS again in the GF. The season is long enough for the cream to rise to the top and the two best teams play off in GF.

[Melbournehammer]

I certainly hope we don't get them at the mcg. They will beat us up on the mcg. There is not a single facet of the game that we've got their measure. Their ruckman physically destroys us. Their tall forwards are individually too good for our tall defenders and Cameron is too fast for rampe which prevents him from getting run out of our backline. He is also aware that rampe plays goalkeeper so he keeps doing fish hook leads because ramps is dropping back to guard the goals. If he kicks straight he will kick ten on us. Their centre square unit killed us and we were only ever getting the ball deep in defence and it's a long way back to the goals from there. Their tackling is more ferocious, their speed is much much faster than ours and their skills leave us for dead.

At the mcg h if this game was replayed we would be beaten by ten goals.

We have so much wrong at the moment. We have a makeshift full forward. One of our better half backs and one of our only decent kicks in the backline is now injured. They have talks who can one touch mark the ball. Their backline is soooooo much faster than our forwards it is scary.

The only thing we have got going for us is room for improvement. I can see Tippett getting better with more game time. He might be the only genuine Unknown. Everyone else is playing about what you'd expect. And our midfield has played this way against the Giants a lot. Two hard games from here we would need everything to go right and injuries to the Giants to beat them. I'd prefer not to go through 2014 again.

[KTigers]

I go to a lot of the GWS games to get a footy fix and they are beatable. If you put together their pressure/skill/speed ie their sheer physical footy attributes they are probably the best team in the comp. They probably have six or seven top ten draft picks sitting in their reserves team putting pressure on the guys in the firsts to perform week in week out. But they do missing from time to time. They lose concentration for a quarter here and there, and that's when other teams can capitalise. It's a well worn clich?, but the mental side is what gets the winners over the line.