Hawthorn v Sydney: The wash up of the 2014 AFL grand final

So apparently Hawthorn is now in the mix for James Frawley this is a club that has gone B2B and is now in the market to recruit a "marquee" player after recruiting Gunston, Lake, Mcevoy etc. So where is all the outrage in the media? where is Eddie, Mathews going on radio the way they blasted the Swans for recruiting Tippett after 2012. Remember they said how does a premiership club recruit a "marquee player" you say Hawthorn have Buddy money fine but Sydney did the same thing by letting go a ton of depth and along with Bradshaw contract. Sickening media bias to Victorian sides compared to Sydney.

Out classed, out coached and I wonder if Swans started to believe the one sided media they receive in Sydney about being unbeatable. Soft preparation including tanking to Richmond to preserve players in the last round. Coming on for the final quarter, I was expecting a "line in the sand" effort from them, but nada, rolled over. Feel sorry for the Sydney faithful that the Welcome Home event at the SCG was canned. The supporters deserve better than that.

Aside from Hawks, he's my favourite player in the league. An absolute class act, dexterous, dangerous, fast and consistent. If it's true he's on the move he'd be a great leader at a struggling club.

Thanks Olivia (and other Swans fans on this site) for your grace in defeat. As you know, going in to the game I thought Hawthorn had been seriously under-rated by many pundits, but even I was amazed at how well they played. As a Hawthorn fan for almost 40 years, I've been privileged to watch my team win 10 premierships. And although everyone now talks about the great Hawthorn teams of the 1980s, back then they would be written off year after year. Too old, too slow, past their peak - this was the received wisdom about Hawthorn every year from 1984 to 1992, when it was finally accurate. In between, they won a whole bunch of flags. So if there's a lesson from that era, it's "never write off Hawthorn." I've enjoyed reading the Roar this season and I'll be back next year. Thanks to all those writers and commenters who put their love of footy ahead of their love for their own team (Olivia is top of this list, in my opinion). Commiserations to all those who don't support Hawthorn. I think the mighty fighting Hawks will have an even bigger hill to climb in 2015 if they're to complete a hat-trick. Sydney will be back, Freo will be up there and Port looks dangerous. Indeed I might have a wager on those three teams joining Hawthorn as the top four in 2015. But Hawthorn should rightly start next year as flag favourites. Never write off the Hawks. See you all next season!

Agreed, although not a Swans or Hawks supporter.

So one in 6.5 Sydneysiders watched the AFL final in the middle of the afternoon outside peak hours and one in 5.2 Sydneysiders watched the NRL semi final in peak hour, not really a bad effort, don't know how you can say they aren't loved and then imply NRL is loved when there isn't that much difference.

As a Hawthorn supporter I was very surprised by the lack of venom in the Swans, in particular as the Hawks continually pressured Buddy, none of the Swans came to help. I certainly expected someone to give the hawthorn players a biff. But they didn't. The Swans looked like they came to play a game of footy, the Hawks to wage a war. I wonder also if the 'walk in the park' against North was poor preparation, whereas the Hawks had a tough workout against Port. The conventional wisdom pre-game was that the Swans had the perfect preparation, perhaps it wasn't. I also wonder about the loss of some of the 'heart and soul' Swans this year, as mentioned in the post. The Hawks had better on field leadership and everything Clarkson tried worked.

in 2005 it was up around 950. that's a significant drop, and it's been decreasing steadily too.

Scary. Hawks were aggressive and intimidatory. Swans showed no fire. Tackling pressure was immense from the frst bounce and Sydney acted like a goody two shoes team not prepared for the hard stuff. Reid, Jack and Lloyd stuffed up a simple goal at the start, admittedly under pressure, and panic seemed to ensue throughout. Stevic gave his usual 4 free kicks to Hawthorn in the first quarter (Did anyone else find the evening up strange in the last quarter?? Not whinging - Hawks too good by far! But I really do not like umps who even it up at the end when the game is dusted!) After Lake fell on Buddy in the marking contest - no problem there - except for the elbow to the back of the head which was deliberate and which NO SWAN REMONSTRATED OR STOOD UP FOR BUDDY!!!! Hawks were simply tougher and that set the tone. They smashed us in the contests. They tackled us and threw us to the ground. They intimidated us. We didn't match up. We didn't attempt to stand up to their physical presence at all. Our vaunted midfield seemed tried hard, but lacked any physical presence and any one on one aggression. Our leaders, particularly Jack and McVeigh, didn't stand up like Hodge did, inspiring others. Very disappointing, and I suspect that they lost a lot of respect by getting smashed in every quarter. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I simply can't imagine Jude Bolton, Ryan O'Keefe, Mumford or even LRT allowing that sort of intimidation. Maybe, just maybe, the Bloods culture has been affected. If so we need to rebuild that tough, uncompomising, blue collar approach. We were outgunned in the physical game. I love Longmire, but how good a coach is Clarkson? Fantastic. Next year will tell a lot about the Swans. GO THE BLOODS!!!

While I'm inclined to agree with you Peter re no massive changes needed, when you get destroyed so badly in such a big game, you can't chalk it up to a bad day and inexperience. Something was fundamentally wrong. Balthazar is somewhat right when he said the same thing happened in 2013 prelim. Sure you had injuries, but the manic pressure and brutality of Freo lead your players to make many poor decisions. They also never settled and didn't fire a shot. I'm not proposing a reason for this or a solution as I have no idea why, but Longmire has better work it out over the summer or every other team will see a mental weakness and try to exploit it.

Wouldn't mind seeing a replay of Ted Richards' mark over Roughy.

A post in another article analyses the defence pretty well. McVeigh will push back next season, as their is enough depth in the midfield. Reid will make a good tall defender. He is scarily frustrating to watch but I remember to blokes called Andrew Dunkley and Leo Barry who were worse at the same age and less skilful, he will come good. Alex Johnson is still there in the waiting but his knee issue could also see his career come to an end early. A back six of Rampe, Grundy, Smith, McVeigh, Reid, Malceski, wouldn't be too bad. With Shaw and Richards battling for their spots O'Keefe like. As for the rucks, Pyke just needs to improve around the ground.

I'd be less concerned about the Swans midfield as about their ruck and their defence. Longmire could reasonably hope for improvement in Cunnungham, Parker and Mitchell in 2015 and none of the midfield are over 30 so the midfield should improve. Stewie I agree with you re Smith doing a pretty good job on Rioli. The main two times Rioli shone were when he intercepted Tippett, and that wasn't Smith's fault. But he's one of several Swans defenders who lack polish on the counter punch. Richards, Grundy and Smith are far better defending than at counter-punching, and Shaw is really only a good counter puncher in games with less pressure. Rohan may evolve into a good rebounder but lacks poise at this stage and was always going to be in trouble once it became clear how little respite the backline would be getting. Another hope to improve the Swans' rebounding in 2015 is Rampe. If the Swans' defence can't rebound with more poise, every team will be following the Dockers' 2013 example and Hawks' 2015 GF example against them.

Olivia, As far as the "where to from here", I wouldn't read into things too much. We played our worst football since round 1. We went into that GF with Tippett, Rohan, Llyod, Cunningham, Rampe, McGlynn, all playing in their first Grand Final. If you look at who played poorly....a good chunk of them come from these GF debutants. A lot for them to gain from the experience. As for the others who have played in a flag win before and under performed yesterday, well our captain spoke pretty candidly about their efforts. Some of our leaders simply didn't stand up. As far as the season went and the other two finals.....we didn't go too badly. I don't think there is a lot that has to change, maybe tweaking a few things here and there. The biggest thing for me is that if you are going to live by a set of values, you need to follow that through on the biggest stage and they didn't. You would hope that there were some similar words from Longmire, to those of Bomber Thomson at the conclusion of 2008, "Don't let that happen....ever again". All we can hope for is that we get another chance next season.

Here was a little thing I posted on a Swans fb page, bit long, but thoughts would be appreciated: Firstly the good news (what little there was): 1. The support. On the tram through the city there were nine swans supporters and zero hawks supporters. And we weren't completely outnumbered in terms of bums on seats either, which was great. But the best thing was that very few people left before the final siren. Say what you will, but we're a dedicated group of fans who love our team. Hell yeah! 2. Nick Smith. He shut down Rioli magnificently, being a bright light in an otherwise dull and dim defence. Although I'm not sure how much I should credit Rioli's lack of match fitness... 3. Our fwd line wasn't as bad as our mids or defence. And now the bad... 1. Defence. It was pretty abominable from the start. Silly little handballs, faffing around with it, cost us multiple goals in the first quarter. Although thankfully that stopped, our disposal efficiency was terrible for the rest of the game. 2. Defence, part 2. When the game was basically lost after half time, you'd think the boys would put in a bit more grunt and fight, but no. The hawks continued to take easy marks in their fwd 50. By giving 5+ metres of space to their opponents, the defenders didn't look like they wanted to be there. It made the second half that much more painful. 3. Midfield. They simply didn't want the footy nearly as much as the Hawks did. The Hawks midfielders nearly always won the hard inside ball (except when JPK decided to pull his finger out), and they always found space on the outside for easy delivery to their fwds. I wonder if anyone (Cunners?) was told to stick to Hill. Certainly didn't look like it. We could not lay a tackle either, with 9 at quarter time and just over 50 for the match; a pale reflection on 2012s 100+ tackling masterclass. However the most damning stat of the night was that they nearly DOUBLED us in uncontested possessions. More than that, they got the same, if not more uncontested ball than we did total disposals! They gathered the ball at will, making us look slow. What's worse, when we did get the ball, we'd cough it up often, with a poor disposal efficiency of 69% What could've helped? Kennedy was alright, McVeigh did an alright job to patch up our defence, but the rest, Jack, Hanners, Cunners, Parker and Lloyd simply didn't show. Would a few stronger bodies help? Someone like a Mitchell, who I believe is set to dominate next year, or a younger O'Keefe? Personally I doubt it, probably more of a psychological thing than anything else. 4. Fwd structure. I'm a bit curious as to why Tippett spent so much time in the ruck. He plays his best in the fwd 50, taking bulk marks and kicking bulk goals, not following the ball, finding himself in defence, giving away stupid lookaway handballs and gifting goals. If Pyke doesn't have the tank/skills to play out a game in the centre, then we have a serious problem that needs fixing in the off season. Plus with Reid being moved as a spare man in defence, that left Buddy alone in the fwd 50 on multiple occasions with ore than one player on him. Giving him space is good, but we play our best when we have heaps of fwd targets. It would've been great to see McGlynn and Jetta have more of a fwd presence. Kizza did this to a small degree tonight. Thoughts? I reckon it was the worst game we played all year. Hawks dominated us and made us look bad. However, time to move on and focus on 2015, which shows plenty of promise. Go bloods!!!!!!!

Inclined to agree with that. Accusations of the Swans not showing up are for mine a bit off the mark (though not unreasonable) - they looked fairly sharp early and I'd argue started initially a little better than Hawthorn did but seemed to wilt really badly around the middle of the first quarter. They seemed unwilling or unable to regroup thereafter. Between the Dockers diabolical goal kicking early and the Swans cheap goals late that prelim you mentioned looked a lot closer on the scoreboard than it ever should have been. The final score and the injury list the Swans had have conspired to see that game effectively written off - perhaps a mistake in hindsight as you say Be very interested to see how the Swans coaching panel responds.

The problem with Tippett is his knee is shot, and it won't improve. He has never been a fast player, but in younger days before the knee problems, he had the ability to lead well. Now he can't lead anywhere near as effectively. I see no way that he will continue on past the next two years of his contract.

Agreed. Buddy was as good as could be expected with such diabolical supply. Tippett's price tag would be justified if he was playing short, sharp bursts through the ruck on a regular basis. Big guys carrying leg complaints do tend to look a bit slow. As things stand right now though you're spot on. As a Suns fan I am - with the benefit of hindsight of course - absolutely thrilled we didn't lose a developing young tall and a chunk of cap space to get Tippett to the Coast.

I am surprised at the free to air TV ratings in Sydney NRL semi 696,000 AFL grand final 551,000 - seems to be after all the years plating in Sydney the Swans are still not loved - why that is the problem

Thoroughly enjoyed watching Franklin yesterday. He's such a talented player, versatile and whose effort in trying times was an example to his lacklustre teammates. Gotta say tho, sydney paid way too much for Tippett. To date, a very poor return on investment. He looked so slow compared to buddy.