Autopsy Round 02 Swans defeated by Hawthorn

[SwansProudly]

A hard fought contest against the Hawks at the MCG but we go down by 17-points.

 

[Tedeski]

Rosas may be under pressure - he disappears a lot. I know he is an 'opportunist' but can still be a pressure forward when we dont have the ball.

Dattoli will do more than this.

 

[bedford]

This we concur on. Effort was there but execution was disgraceful and decision making was not that of a good side. Their ability to hit targets moving forward at the kicker was far superior to ours. We lacked system going forward from slow plays and decision making on kicking to the advantage of the forward was deplorable. Time and time again the player in space was ignored to only go to the contest.

Nice when we can concur

 

[Wolfgang West]

3rd week innnow.
Manage Paps in the twos.

He currently has the fitness of fat centreman playing in the twos in Dive 3 reserves. Not to mention cannot stand on his 2 feet. He needs extra work of over the next couple of weeks. I would take him aside and flog the work into him. He is paddling.

 

[Heeney2Franklin]

Mills looked weirdly upset after that round 2 loss said "we really wanted to win that"

 

[Wolfgang West]

Mills looked weirdly upset after that round 2 loss said "we really wanted to win that"

As he would be. His effort to lead from the front was glaring. He has been great so far.

 

[Millky95]

Home from the game and bloody tired but something important to note is that there was no music after the goals all night

 

[Dubai Quacker]

I feel like this a cop out for Cleary, Cox and the coaching staff would have very clearly communicated to him early in the week that he’d be the ‘pseudo-sub’ and have ~50% TOG, it’s not like he was just suddenly benched on game day.

I understand your point of view - but I think Cox’s use of Cleary contradicts his “next man up has to do the job” public statements.

The coach gave him the absolute minimum ToG (he wasn’t even put on the field in Q1) & to me, that sends a message that you’re not really considered capable of “doing the job”.

It was almost like 23 vs 22. “Next man up” can’t do the job if he isn’t given a decent run at it.

 

[zyzzbruh]

Dattoli will do more than this.

He really won't.

 

[Jack2Jack]

The AFL's fixturing is ****ing garbage sometimes. If you're going to dish out 5 day breaks on Thursday, both teams should be coming off the Saturday games. Like how hard is that. Could've easily had tonight's and tomorrows game the other way around and had 2 teams 5 day break teams going at each other.

 

[Heeney2Franklin]

The AFL's fixturing is ****ing garbage sometimes. If you're going to dish out 5 day breaks on Thursday, both teams should be coming off the Saturday games. Like how hard is that. Could've easily had tonight's and tomorrows game the other way around and had 2 teams 5 day break teams going at each other.

AFL way is "deal" with it unless your a big club then you can complain.

 

[Maddo11]

Man, my freaking jaw is aching from grinding my teeth during that match.

Footy ain't good for my health

 

[Heeney2Franklin]

Man, my freaking jaw is aching from grinding my teeth during that match.

Footy ain't good for my health

Gotta find the right balance otherwise you will go insane especially this early

 

[RedOrWhite]

Agree with Jack. The short turnaround defo bit us in the backside at the end of each half. We started well but couldn't get near them at the end.

But given that and the 2 lads we had out it was a valiant effort. Just sucks we have to stew on that for 16 days now. The scheduling is ridiculous!

 

[squirtle004]

GG. Just popping in to say I thought McInerny had a great game. Thought he tore through us when he got going

 

[liz]

Gulden, Heeney, Cunningham and Campbell are all best 23 players for us and out of the side.

5 day break, with travel against a potential top 4 side this year.

To be right in it to the end is a fantastic effort, I'm not concerned about this loss at all.

Felt like we stopped attacking the middle as we got tired, so that will be something to work on.

I’ve not read the whole thread so I might be repeating comments of others.

I see this mostly as a March opportunity for the coaches. After the first quarter, the Hawks shut down our preferred method of ball movement and we reverted to the long aimless hoik into the forward line. Either our forwards have to learn to cope better with that or we need an alternative second method. There was a period in the third quarter where we were dominating clearances but the Hawks managed to turn that around. I confess I find it hard to work out what changed. Was it the rucks neutralising Grundy somewhat? Or mostly Newcombe lifting?

Sheldrick showed why he’s getting selected over Cleary at the moment. His scrap at the contests was good and hopefully he’ll gradually get better at using the ball. Corey was an ok inclusion for a game when we can use the run and gun method but the style the game moved to wasn’t able to take any advantage of his attributes. I'd keep him in over Cleary at the moment, but would also look to see if someone like Adams can provide us more first use of the ball at contests so we're not so reliant on moving the ball the length of the ground. I don't know if he still has that in him but it might be worth a try.

I have seen a couple of comments whingeing that Cleary was kept on the bench for the first quarter and that this sent a bad message to him. I call that rubbish. Clubs are still working out how to manage the same rotations with an extra player, and many are effectively keeping one player on the bench for a long period of time. It was Papley for us in the first couple of rounds. If Cleary can't cope with that, he has no place in the team. I doubt it had anything to do with his performance. He just doesn't look yet ready for a contest that hot.

 

[liz]

GG. Just popping in to say I thought McInerny had a great game. Thought he tore through us when he got going

He had a few moments, but others he'd rather have back. He works well when we can play our preferred style but once your team took that away, he probably wasn't the one to try and wrestle it back. That's where we probably really missed Heeney and Gulden.

 

[Highflying Swans]

We were lucky Hawthorn kicked inaccurately and missed a few, margin could have been 6-7 goals.
Thought we were patchy, good first quarter, average in 2nd, started will in the 3rd 20 points up and then fell away badly. Ran out of legs in the last quarter.
A good effort but a lot of concerns. Our forward line was dysfunctional. Some poor decision making and brain fades in the back half during didn’t help either.
As for Charlie already many comments on here I’ll just say I was disappointed. Started well and then was clearly outpointed in marking contests. For a bloke of his size it just isn’t good enough. I just hope he is settling in and needs a breakout game to restore his confidence but from what I am seeing he is struggling. We await him to come good but if this continues the question is going to be asked. We traded the farm for him so I hope it is just a blip on the radar. Perhaps the bye might do him good to refocus.

 

[McRobie]

All Rowbottom can do is tackle. Absolutely worthless going back the other way. Waste of time, you can’t win a flag when he’s one of your main center bounce midfielders, 12 touches all game from one of your prime mids is just a fail.

 

[MF]

I'm not sure we ran out of gas so much as Cox just couldn't deal with Mitchell's tactics in the 2nd half. The Hawks kept putting more players behind the ball and Cox kept manning them up. We were then left with a crowded forward line that we kept having to bomb the ball into and we couldn't take a contested mark to save our lives.

Hawthorn weren't exactly dominating with their forward entries either but they did enough to win the game.

I said before the game that we'd miss Cunningham against Hawthorns small forwards. Wicks did a good job on Watson but Moore absolutely carved us up.

Not the end of the world as we banked a couple of wins early and now have a week to rest.

 

[liz]

Not the end of the world as we banked a couple of wins early and now have a week to rest.

And several months to tweak the game plan and devise alternate ways to play. Some will say that they should have done this during the off-season. I daresay they thought about it. But when you have your own set way of playing, it's hard to simulate the effect of another team taking that away from you.

 

[Dewyyyyy]

Hopefully it’s okay for me to pop in here.

Just a quick shout out to two of your lads

Bice and Corey Warner

Serious players and for Warner young aswell.

Bice’s ball use is pure class and Corey’s pace set the game apart at times.

You’ve got good ones there, and take good care of Serong as a supporters group, he’s fit in like a puzzle piece with you guys, looks at home and very good.

 

[liz]

Hopefully it’s okay for me to pop in here.

Just a quick shout out to two of your lads

Bice and Corey Warner

Serious players and for Warner young aswell.

Bice’s ball use is pure class and Corey’s pace set the game apart at times.

You’ve got good ones there, and take good care of Serong as a supporters group, he’s fit in like a puzzle piece with you guys, looks at home and very good.

Were you at the MCG tonight?

 

[The King!]

I think it just is frustrating they genuinely could have pinched one at the MCG but they also were kind of shit

 

[The King!]

Some of our decisions when the pressure is on are baffling eg I think Bice and Warner both just kicked off the ground at different times straight to hawthorn, Melican doing a long dumb floating handball into the centre that was a turnover , spoiling back into play

 

[grimlock]

Cleary’s 0% TOG in the first quarter has been brought up a few times but not accompanied by the fact he played 100% TOG in the second. As Liz said teams are still trying to work out how to use the 23rd man, and Cleary’s usage in the first half seems to be one of those experiments.

Other teams like the Hawks tonight (Meek 53% Reeves 47%) and the Crows last week have used it exclusively on the second ruck. There was talk that Ladhams or McLean would fill this role last night but didn’t eventuate. I think in hindsight we may regret not doing this against two strong rucks