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West Coast have proved it is no aberration – the Swans are in deep trouble in 2015.
It is hard to write off a team that has been high-achieving for so long, but now the fat lady must be singing on the Sydney Swans this season.
It is not to say that they should have beaten the Eagles, but another ‘un-Swans-like’ performance has the alarm bells ringing.
Something is dreadfully amiss – Swans fans are so used to seeing a side with a big heart that contests, fights and scraps their way to wins, not one that buckles over like the Swans have in the past fortnight. And let’s not forget they only just got over Brisbane the week before that.
The trademarks of the Swans: selfless play, discipline, relentless pressure, and tackles that stick, have all but disappeared.
My old man (who moonlights as a weekend armchair Sydney critic) made an interesting observation during the Swans clash with the Eagles.
He (in between sprays opining that the Swans no longer have a ‘Bloods culture’ since the Buddy Franklin and Kurt Tippett acquisitions) noted that the Western Bulldogs are playing the brand of footy the Swans have lost. The Bulldogs are taking the game on and clearly under instruction to play without fear of making a mistake.
While it seems ridiculously harsh to criticise a coach when a team sits fourth with 11 wins and five losses this deep in a season, John Longmire must come under scrutiny, as the players are not responding lately and look simply lost on the field at times.
Unlike the Bulldogs (who now sit only one win behind the Swans), Sydney players are presently displaying a combination of poor skills, lack of communication, errant decision-making and tentativeness to take the game on.
Last week I wrote that the Swans forward structure looked shot, and what better way to test a new plan than without the injured Buddy Franklin or Kurt Tippett.
However, time and again the team seemed listless in going forward, unable to find a target – Gerard Healy summarised it very well when he said that players are looking to clear the ball from their area and rid themselves of being accountable – the Swans looked like 22 individuals out there.
If I was John Longmire, here are a few of the things I would be looking at:
Players are shunning the centre corridor – in 2012 the Swans played a wonderful, frenzied football through the centre with highly-skilled handballing midfielders interlaced with wonderful driving kicks from the half-backs and centres. The corridor must be revisited.
There is no lead-up forward in the structure – if you are going to play a sling-shot style of game you need strong leading mark who can hold the ball to let the midfielders run through.
The team do not play by the adage that the ‘boundary line is your friend’ when under pressure. Defenders are continually turning the ball back in towards the centre when pressured. Similar to the football adage ‘don’t kick across your goal’.
Team mates are also going third and fourth man up to spoil the ball – while these number make an effective spoil, countless opposition players are left on the ground for the crumb.
While some of these elements are certainly down to decision-making, so many players are making the same mistakes repeatedly that it cannot be just down to dumb choices.
Longmire must look at reinvigorating the team, as the biggest worry is while the team has not only bottomed out, the competitive spark has also gone.
Some analysts will say if Sam Reid hadn’t kicked 0.4, or if Brandon Jack had lowered his eyes and found his brother early in the final term, the match may have had a different edge. But the Swans mini-revival in the third term was clearly when the Eagles had put on the brakes and an early cue the rack – they smashed the Swans in the clearances and contested footy, and the rucking of Naitanui was something to behold.
Could it be that as Longmire has been at the Swans for over a decade that his message is beginning to sound tired or lost?
Horse certainly deserves an opportunity to repair this malaise, but the high-profile acquisitions over the last two years draw an increasing spotlight and expectation from fans to get it right. If not, the rest of the AFL world is ready to get the knives out on a team that they perceive became greedy on COLA and tried to buy a dynasty of success.
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