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Are the Sydney Swans still a contender? Yes, but...

14th July, 2015
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14th July, 2015
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Are the Sydney Swans becoming a star-oriented team?

I was left asking myself that question – mostly because I think I’m the only one that thinks of such questions – when the Swans re-signed young midfielder Dan Hannebery to a five year (excluding the one year he had remaining on his sophomore deal) extension thought to be in the $700,000-$800,000 per annum range.

The deal sees Hannebery, a worthy candidate for second best player in the league this season, avoid free agency and the combined lure of cashed up Victorian clubs and new TV deal money set to flow in 2017.

Co-captain Kieran Jack is due for a new deal this year, and given his career arc to date would look unlikely to sign anywhere else. His deal probably won’t have the same number in front of the five zeros as Hannebery, but the versatile midfielder will command something north of $500,000 in the current market – particularly if he resists the Swans’ overtures and waits until the end of the season to put pen to paper.

That would make it four substantial contracts in three and a bit seasons for the Swans, who threw many dollars at Lance Franklin and Kurt Tippett in 2012 and 2013 respectively. The four potentially represent somewhere north of 30 per cent of Sydney’s newly-normal salary cap, which is a fair chunk of change for a club with a working class reputation to be spending on less than a handful of players.

It puts the Swans in a very interesting spot. Gone are the days of Sydney being everyone’s second team – the group of players you really wanted to see win, because life is tough as an AFL footballer in a rugby league heartland.

Sustained success over more than a decade, the emergence of a competitor in the market, and the rising value of Brand Sydney on a global stage, have conspired to see the Swans shed that reputation. Make no mistake, Sydney are the New York Yankees of the AFL.

Lance Franklin of the SwansLance Franklin – another of the dastardly recruits

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And they’re playing like it, too. While the Swans are once again at the top of the ladder, a quite dramatic change in game style in 2015 is causing some missteps, which might see them punted from this finals series by the likes of Hawthorn and West Coast (there, I said it).

That doesn’t see them lose their status as contenders, but it also means their road to the grand final isn’t paved with gold in the same way it was in 2014.

The perennial contender
The Sydney Swans have been a perennial contender since the turn of the century, with the Swans missing out on the eight just twice in those 14 seasons, on their way to playing four grand finals for two Premierships.

Not to go on a tangent after less than half a dozen paragraphs, but their 2005 Premiership win was part of the two-year stretch that got me into football. As more than a 14-year-old dude, anyway.

Footy had always been a staple in my household, with West Coast the team of choice, but it was that run of magical games (six straight games with margins of 2, 4, 2, 1, 1 and 1 respectively, including two qualifying finals and two grand finals) that started my journey from casual to outright football nerd.

Anyway, Sydney’s perennialism has extended to season 2015. Sydney are perched third on the ladder, one game ahead of Hawthorn – who they play this week – equal on points with West Coast, and one game behind the stumbling Fremantle. With eight games remaining, the Swans are still well in the hunt for a top two finish, and the home-field advantage that comes with it.

(Out of interest, the Swans have only finished top two once during this era: last season)

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But it’s not that simple. Sydney’s contention has become more complicated over the past five weeks, as they’ve managed three wins with a percentage of just 109.5 per cent. Sydney squeaked over the line against North Melbourne, lost to Richmond, did enough in a dour affair against Port Adelaide, and were flailing about until the 25-minute mark of the third against Brisbane.

Before this four-game stretch, Sydney were taking care of business: 8-2 (with back-to-back losses against Fremantle and the Bulldogs) with a percentage of 140.4 per cent.

Their near-league-leading defence remains a well-oiled machine. As I discussed in an extra special Thursday Night Forecast a couple of weeks back, the Swans have built a scheme that makes it really hard for opposition sides to take efficient shots for goal.

Sydney are excellent at building a tightly-formed T-shape defensive formation inside their defensive 50, which forces opponents wide and towards either boundary when entering the attacking zone.

You can take it on, for sure, but it generally ends in death.

Sydney are conceding just 8.5 marks inside 50 per game so far in 2015, ranked number one in a good way, and allow their opponents to get six points on 46.7 per cent of scoring shots – again a league-leading mark. Seven of the top eight for marks per game at the Swans are players that spend the majority of their time in the back half, which is unusual by league standards. Most teams have a mixture of key forwards and midfielders as the top ball catchers.

The Swans have been a top tier defence for an eternity, only dropping out of the top four three times (2009 through 2011) and not missing the top eight on Defensive Efficiency Rating since their maiden Swans Premiership in 2005.

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And in the forward half, things are going well – if not as well as they did in 2014. The Bondi Billionaires, Lance Franklin and Kurt Tippett, are producing a slice of Sydney’s offence as big as their hit on the salary cap: 37 per cent of Sydney’s goals, 34 per cent of total scoring shots, 40 per cent of marks inside 50, and 10 per cent of the team’s goal assists are coming from the pairing.

When Tippett and Franklin both play, the Swans project as a league-leading offence, as I discussed earlier in the year.

Overall, though, Sydney’s offensive efficiency has taken a bit of a drop between this year and last, with the Swans moving from a clear top four offence to something more bottom-of-the-eight worthy. Sydney are down 2.4 inside 50s per game, are converting about three per cent less on those opportunities, and are doing so with slightly less accuracy.

All told, its seen a dip of about seven points per game in raw terms, but when compared to the overall competition Sydney’s offensive efficiency rating has declined a quite remarkable 8.6 points.

To put that into context, it’s the fifth-worst drop off in the league, with three of the four sides that have seen a larger decline currently holding up spots 14th, 16th and 17th on the ladder. The other is Port Adelaide, which is more a product of how good they were last year and how average they are this season.

One more: Fremantle, the league’s other defensive powerhouse, have experienced a Sydney-like 8.5 point decline in their offensive efficiency. Hawthorn, by contrast, haven’t skipped a beat, and are putting up an offensive performance that’s just 0.8 points lower than last season. You’ll see what I think this means at the end of the column.

Ok to Sydney. For mine, there’s two problems, and they both centre on issues through the middle of the ground. The Swans once-dynamic midfield full of powerful clearance machines is being shown up by the more flexible, adaptable, modern midfield sets, and while Sydney have tried to adapt, its not quite working for them yet. The Swans are a window in to the evolution of the AFL on the field – their historic penchant for positional and role players is setting them up to stagnate near the top of the ladder.

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Don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly worse places to be stagnating. But you don’t win the flag if you’re not successfully innovating and keeping up with the game. And that’s the risk facing Sydney, heading not just into the final eight games of this year, but in 2016 and beyond.

Losing some punch…
But first, a look at Sydney’s direct scoring power.

Their declining scoring punch is a little bit to do with Tippett and Franklin, who’ve dipped from a crazy 41.4 points per game between them in 2014 – which was the ladder-leading duo last season – to a more above average-to-crazy 32.1 points per game.

That’s a drop of about 10 points, which explains a fair chunk of Sydney’s drop in offensive efficiency. That means the two are still averaging about 16 points per game each, which puts them in the top four in the league (behind West Coast, Adelaide and GWS).

Kurt Tippett and Lance FranklinPick it up lads, gosh. (Photo: Sean Garnsworthy/AFL Media)

However, the rest of Sydney’s team forward of the ball have also seen their direct scoreboard impact wane. This takes in the third and fourth options forward of the ball, but also the core group of midfielders that are called upon to kick goals in modern AFL football.

Sydney’s top 10 scorers not named Lance and Kurt have been good for just 44.8 points per game in 2015 (ranked 14th in the league), down from 54.2 points per game (ranked seventh) in 2014.

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The drop in midfield output has been among the starkest in the league: where the rest of the league has seen an increase of 1.3 points per game from their attacking group, Sydney have declined by 9.4 points. That works out to about two goals per game in a relative sense. The only sides to see larger declines are Port Adelaide (-17.0 points per game) and Gold Coast (-23.2 points per game).

In running the numbers, I’ve found that the scoring power of a team’s top ten scorers (excluding the top two) is substantially more predictive of their potential offensive efficiency than isolating the impact of the players at the top. For a team that has close to one in five dollars of its salary cap tied up in its two key forwards, that’s a problem.

…and not just on the scoreboard
More critically for the Swans, though, is a dip in their midfield potency.

This is partly to do with individual players – Ben McGlynn, for example, is down around three contested possessions per game, while Jarrad McVeigh and Craig Bird are winning less of the ball. To my mind, though, it has a lot to do with a dramatic overhaul in coach John Longmire’s scheme around the clinches.

In many ways this is to do with the players that Longmire now has available to him running through the middle of the ground. Youngsters Hannebery, Jake Lloyd and Tom Mitchell aren’t the in-and-under players of the Sydney side I grew up watching, nor the big bodied, 190cm or more midfielders the likes of Fremantle are now rolling with. In fact, the only regular midfielder that the Swans play that fits that mould is Josh Kennedy, who himself stands at just 188cm.

Would it surprise you to learn that Sydney, the contested possession warriors, have had a negative clearance differential every season since 2012? It surprised me.

They have effectively broken even this season (566 clearances won versus 565 lost), putting them in ninth spot overall on the clearance differential table. Hawthorn, Adelaide (oh my God these guys need to re-sign You Know Who) and Fremantle are at the top, with +7.5, +7.3 and +6.3 respectively.

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This is an increasingly important part of the game, given the explosion in stoppage situations we’ve seen in the AFL in recent years.

Last season, Sydney were ranked 13th, with a clearance differential of -0.4 per game. Most teams end up in a range of +/-1 over the course of a season, but in recent years it’s been the biggest bodied midfield groups that have given their half forward line first use of the ball out of clearance situations.

Sydney appear to have responded to this trend, plus their lack of size through the middle, by adopting a much more open stance around clearances.

Here’s a clearance from Sydney’s Round 8 match up with Hawthorn in 2014, versus a set from this season (coincidentally, against the Hawks in Round 8). Both clearances are occurring on Sydney’s right half back flank, so we can see how they look to organise themselves in the same situation but from year to year.

2014 (goes first)

2015 (goes second)

The difference is quite clear. 2014 Sydney seek to clog up space and not allow their opponents an easy run if they get the ball.

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2015 Sydney, by contrast, are allowing much more space around the ball and trusting their small, nimble midfielders to get the ball and move it forward.

This is reinforced by a dramatic shift in Sydney’s mode of possession. Last season, the Swans won 60.5 per cent of their possessions in uncontested situations, ranked 12th in the league.

This season, they’re winning 63.7 per cent, ranked sixth.

Sydney’s 280 basis point lift in uncontested possession rate is the second most in the league, behind West Coast. The Swans have moved from a below average uncontested possession side to an above average side in less than 12 months.

But this hasn’t been accompanied by a requisite increase in their marks per game, suggesting the Swans are trying to use their nimble midfield core to run the length of the ground. The eye test backs this up, with Sydney content to use their legs more frequently as an option going forward.

It’s seen Sydney buck the kick-first trend of other sides across the league, with the Swans exhibiting the lowest kick-to-handball ratio of any side in the competition at 1.18 (the average is 1.3, while Adelaide kick the ball 50 per cent more often than they handball).

The more open game style has seen Sydney become easier to kick on, too, conceding a kick-to-handball ratio of 1.34. Last season, Sydney were five per cent more likely to kick the ball upon receipt, and were six per cent less likely to be kicked on.

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There’s no right or wrong when it comes to how you move the ball. What matters is whether you’re effective. Given Sydney’s offensive efficiency has dropped off, you’d have to start asking questions as to whether the stylistic tweak is working for the Swans.

Changing of the guard
As above, the only midfielder able to hold his head high as an improver under this scheme is Hannebery.

The 24-year-old is racking up an additional six possession per game in 2015 versus 2014, including 4.5 additional contested possessions driven by his run and spread from stoppage situations. He has become Sydney’s weapon of choice heading forward, averaging almost two more inside 50s per game, while maintaining an elite level disposal efficiency.

Outside of Hannebery, Sydney’s established midfielders are putting up the same numbers as last season. Which is fine, but it’s worth noting that the rest of the top four have seen improvements right across their midfield groupings. Andrew Gaff, Chris Masten and Eliot Yeo at West Coast; Nat Fyfe, Lachie Neale and David Mundy at Fremantle; Jordan Lewis, Sam Mitchell and Issac Smith at Hawthorn.

At Sydney, Tom Mitchell and Jake Lloyd are coming on, but they are still three or four years away from become big enough parts of the team to take the game on in their own right. Isaac Heeney looks a gun, but is only 19. None of this group measure up to the tall midfield groups common across other parts of the league.

Meanwhile, the impact of draconian trade sanctions imposed by the AFL last year is yet to be completely felt.

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said at the time something to the effect of “the Swans can’t have everyone”, but unilaterally slapping a ban on the ability to bring players in – even if the purpose of the measure was to strong arm Sydney into giving up their Cost of Living Allowance – represents bad policy.

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Given Sydney’s past preference for picking up players from the waiver wire, it’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.

While the league has softened the measure earlier this year, Sydney will still be barred from picking up free agents, or trading for players that earn more than the average AFL wage (around $300,000 including service agreements, according to last year’s AFL Annual Report).

Also looming is reform to the way the northern clubs get access to their academy prospects through the draft.

There’s still a lot of water to travel under the bridge on this measure, and the related future draft pick trading proposal, but what is clear is that Sydney won’t be able to get access to their local talent at the relatively low prices they have paid in recent years.

It sets up what will be a very interesting little stretch for Sydney. The Swans face off against Hawthorn this week, travel to Subiaco to play West Coast, and host another clearance machine in Adelaide over the next three weeks. We’ll learn a lot about whether Sydney’s changing midfield set is geared to handle the best set piece sides in the game.

Are Sydney still a contender? When you have the best player in the game not named Nat, you’re always going to be thereabouts. But a transitioning midfield makes Sydney’s task more challenging than it has been in recent years.

Speaking of best sides in the competition, there’s a move at the top in my latest guess of the final standings.

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Improper Projections: Round 15
There’s change at the pointy end in Round 15’s run of Improper Projections.

IPs (Round 15)

So Hawthorn are back to premiership favouritism, and not just because of the weekend’s results. The Hawks have all-but a full list available, have the best percentage in the league (adjusted for strength of schedule), and have the best inside 50 differential in the league at +15.4. The next best is West Coast (+14.5) – who I now have as top four fancies – and then it’s daylight to Fremantle in third (+8.1).

North Melbourne did a number on me after I said they were in the frame for a top-four finish, and I’ve now got them in sixth place. Richmond could still make it to the top four should West Coast stumble over the toughest part of their draw.

Speaking of which, the schedule has delivered us yet another quirk in 2015. The current top four still have 32 games to play. Just four of those are among themselves:

R16 Sydney v Hawthorn
R17 West Coast v Sydney
R19 West Coast v Hawthorn
R20 Fremantle v West Coast

Each of these games is crucial to the shape of the top four over the remainder of the year. It goes without saying that West Coast could end up as high as second, or as low as fifth, depending on how they perform over that stretch from Round 17 to 20.

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The Battle for the Bottom Half of the Eight (aka TBBHE, no, actually, lets not use that) is heating up, too, with the weekend’s results really tightening things up. Anyone from sixth to 12th could make it into the final three top eight spots, and there are also very few times they match up on each other over the remainder of the year:

R16 Geelong v Western Bulldogs
R16 Port Adelaide v Adelaide
R17 Greater Western Sydney v Geelong
R17 Western Bulldogs v Collingwood
R19 Western Bulldogs v Port Adelaide
R20 Port Adelaide v Greater Western Sydney
R22 Geelong v Collingwood
R22 North Melbourne v Western Bulldogs
R23 Geelong v Adelaide

It starts this weekend, with Geelong and the Dogs and the Showdown.

This season might not be the best in terms of quality of play, but man oh man, it’s delivering on a lot of other fronts.

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