Finals

[Daisi]

All my life, my 70 year old mother has been saying, ' I would love to see something at the MCG'... so we're going to Melbourne to see 'something' at the MCG....

Something good I hope...I got the tickets, no problem at all...very smooth transaction...

Defy the Odds!

[AnnieH]

Finals footy is a whole new ball game.

[top40]

I just pressed the button on the AFL site, on the poll about who wins next week, between us and Geelong. I was expecting around a 60/40 split in our favour, but if you can trust the figures, of the 22,000 voter so far, 87% think that we'll win.

"Zero and six"...everyone keeps referring to the Swans in Season 2017 overcoming a zero-6 start in the Home and Away period to end up playing at least Week 2 of the Finals.

Here's another "zero and six" statistic related to the Finals:
The Sydney Swans are presently 0-6 for semi finals played away from home. All played in Victoria:
1986 Lost to Fitzroy
1987 Lost to Melbourne
2004 Lost to St Kilda
2008 Lost to Western Bulldogs
2010 Lost to Western Bulldogs
2011 Lost to Hawthorn

Time to break another zero and six draught.

Interestly, none of the above victors won their subsequent Preliminary Final.

[RogueSwan]

In slow motion you can see Stuey drop his shoulder to draw the free but I agree that in real time it would have been called high all year....

I don't know if he was trying to draw the free or just trying to shrug the tackle as a lot of players do.

[thedoc]

"Zero and six"...everyone keeps referring to the Swans in Season 2017 overcoming a zero-6 start in the Home and Away period to end up playing at least Week 2 of the Finals.

Here's another "zero and six" statistic related to the Finals:
The Sydney Swans are presently 0-6 for semi finals played away from home. All played in Victoria:
1986 Lost to Fitzroy
1987 Lost to Melbourne
2004 Lost to St Kilda
2008 Lost to Western Bulldogs
2010 Lost to Western Bulldogs
2011 Lost to Hawthorn

Time to break another zero and six draught.

Interestly, none of the above victors won their subsequent Preliminary Final.

Nice angle - its all about #defytheodds - roll on you Bloods!!!

[Blue Sun]

I don't know if he was trying to draw the free or just trying to shrug the tackle as a lot of players do.

Unsportsmanlike tactic, IMO. Puopolo is a master at it, drives me mad. If the player ducks into the tackle or throws their arms up, it should be play on.

[neilfws]

In slow motion you can see Stuey drop his shoulder to draw the free but I agree that in real time it would have been called high

More an arm lift than a shoulder drop I thought, but your point stands: in real time it looked like a high. Dermott Brereton was yelling for ultra slow-motion and freeze frames post-game, apparently forgetting that umps on the field have none of these things.

Your other point is good too; best way to win the game is to be more than a goal up at the death.

[Nico]

More an arm lift than a shoulder drop I thought, but your point stands: in real time it looked like a high. Dermott Brereton was yelling for ultra slow-motion and freeze frames post-game, apparently forgetting that umps on the field have none of these things.

Your other point is good too; best way to win the game is to be more than a goal up at the death.

There is a point that never gets brought up; a lot of players wear a lot of oil on the exposed parts of their body to cause tackles to slip. Has been done forever. So it easy for players like those mentioned to simply lift an arm slightly or roll the shoulders. We have our own George Hewett who similarly tries to draw frees. Most of the time it doesn't work for him.

[Meg]

More an arm lift than a shoulder drop I thought.

You are right, I meant to say arm lift, don't know why I typed shoulder drop.

[KTigers]

For once I agree. I bought tickets to the Geelong game, the GWS Spotless game, airline tickets and booked the hotel online, all in the space
of 45 mins and nothing went wrong, no frozen screens, no timed out messages.... it was just plain weird !

Surprisingly smooth transaction. Tickets have been secured. Bring it on!!

[Billericay]

Unsportsmanlike tactic, IMO. Puopolo is a master at it, drives me mad. If the player ducks into the tackle or throws their arms up, it should be play on.

I enjoyed seeing Rance duck into the tackle from Taylor and get called to play on

[Faunac8]

Well missed the win on Saturday a I was in transit overthrew pacific. The announced the results when we landed at LAX and the cheers were definitely louder for the Swans result. However shattered to find that my Foxtel Go and thus my subscription to watch Footy is geoblocked so can't watch any of the next three games online at all.
My fault for scheduling a holiday in September I suppose but pretty poor form from Foxtel.

[Go Swannies]

Well missed the win on Saturday a I was in transit overthrew pacific. The announced the results when we landed at LAX and the cheers were definitely louder for the Swans result. However shattered to find that my Foxtel Go and thus my subscription to watch Footy is geoblocked so can't watch any of the next three games online at all.
My fault for scheduling a holiday in September I suppose but pretty poor form from Foxtel.

Buy a VPN and say you're in Sydney. Back on line.

[Burra]

Buy a VPN and say you're in Sydney. Back on line.

Heheheh. Sticking it to the man.

[dejavoodoo44]

"Zero and six"...everyone keeps referring to the Swans in Season 2017 overcoming a zero-6 start in the Home and Away period to end up playing at least Week 2 of the Finals.

Here's another "zero and six" statistic related to the Finals:
The Sydney Swans are presently 0-6 for semi finals played away from home. All played in Victoria:
1986 Lost to Fitzroy
1987 Lost to Melbourne
2004 Lost to St Kilda
2008 Lost to Western Bulldogs
2010 Lost to Western Bulldogs
2011 Lost to Hawthorn

Time to break another zero and six draught.

Interestly, none of the above victors won their subsequent Preliminary Final.

Yes, it used to be common wisdom that the winning elimination finalist, would look to be in much better shape than the losing qualifying finalists, but then invariably, the team from the elimination final would get smashed. Though without looking at the stats, I suspect that has been changing in recent years. And I'm not really sure if the bye week has any effect? Having only season to go on doesn't prove anything. Though it is possible that teams in the lower half of the eight, had more of a struggle to get into the eight, so maybe the bye is more beneficial to them? But of course, that's pure conjecture.
However, there are couple of areas where we might have an advantage, because of our 0/6 start. Firstly, this is an elimination game and we were essentially playing games, that were very close to elimination games, for much of the season. And also, since it required a winning run of historic proportions to make the eight from 0/6, then we probably have more momentum, than pretty well every other bottom half of the eight side.