Player Watch #1 GigaChad Warner - Now with more GigaBedford

Kennedy Parker · Feb 7, 2021

Chad Warner
When the Sydney Swans swept up Chad Warner with pick 39 at the 2019 AFL Draft, they secured a youngster with an insatiable appetite for the contest. Warner attacks the ball and opponents with aggression and is relishing calling midfield bulls Josh Kennedy and Luke Parker his teammates at the Swans. Warner impressed for Western Australia in the 2019 AFL Under-18 Championships, averaging 18.2 touches (50 per cent contested), 3.2 clearances and 6.8 tackles per game. He also tallied an average of 27.1 disposals, 6.4 clearances and 7.4 tackles per match at Colts level for East Fremantle in 2019. He earned his AFL debut against Richmond in Round 6 of the 2020 season, recording eight disposals and two tackles.

Chad Warner
DOB: 19 May 2001
DEBUT: 2020
DRAFT: #39, 2019 National Draft
RECRUITED FROM: Willetton (WA)/Aquinas College (WA)/East Fremantle (WAFL)

Chad Warner | AFL

Follow Chad Warner's progress through AFL

www.sydneyswans.com.au

Kiama Chris · Dec 2, 2023

JackHiscoxWasFast said:
If he works on his middle distance speed he won’t be caught like he was last season. His burst speed is good but needs to maintain it by running a few 800m. Now Jack Hiscox was a great 800m runner. I like fast players.

Disagree. His speed is fine. He slows down to find a target. Focusses ahead and misses tacklers at the side and behind. He needs to work on that. Also on when to fend and when to handball off. Decision-making more than skill.
Middle distance speed and endurance would help him get between contests.

Wolfgang West · Dec 2, 2023

Kiama Chris said:
Disagree. His speed is fine. He slows down to find a target. Focusses ahead and misses tacklers at the side and behind. He needs to work on that. Also on when to fend and when to handball off. Decision-making more than skill.
Middle distance speed and endurance would help him get between contests.

What he needs to do is be paired with Gulden for the whole preseason and learn what 2 way running is.

Dubai Quacker · Dec 3, 2023

Getting rid of the poodle haircut is a promising sign.

Best pre-season signal yet.

Ed_Gein · Dec 3, 2023

I'm hoping Warner is the one to really flourish after the aquisition of Adams. Has some pretty GAJ like qualities in the sense of being able to burst away from packs at speed and deliver nicely inside 50, but he also seems to have consistency problems at times. One week he'll have 35 disposals and BOG followed with a sub-20 "Is he on the ground?" type performance the following week. With Adams now in there, hopefully Warner can bridge that gap between his best and quiet games to deliver at a high level week-in week-out.

Kiama Chris · Dec 3, 2023

Ed_Gein said:
I'm hoping Warner is the one to really flourish after the aquisition of Adams. Has some pretty GAJ like qualities in the sense of being able to burst away from packs at speed and deliver nicely inside 50, but he also seems to have consistency problems at times. One week he'll have 35 disposals and BOG followed with a sub-20 "Is he on the ground?" type performance the following week. With Adams now in there, hopefully Warner can bridge that gap between his best and quiet games to deliver at a high level week-in week-out.

Me too. I'm hopeful that he and Gulden both will get a little bit more on the edge or outside of packs. Warner too often had to make his own breakout. He's very strong but he's not a big guy and got got caught a bit. Errol got a fair bit of possession on the run which was brilliant. If Chad can get more of that he'll have a great year. Grundy and Adams should be a big plus in that regard, maybe also allow Rowbottom to play more positively too.

caesar88 · Dec 3, 2023

Kiama Chris said:
Me too. I'm hopeful that he and Gulden both will get a little bit more on the edge or outside of packs. Warner too often had to make his own breakout. He's very strong but he's not a big guy and got got caught a bit. Errol got a fair bit of possession on the run which was brilliant. If Chad can get more of that he'll have a great year. Grundy and Adams should be a big plus in that regard, maybe also allow Rowbottom to play more positively too.

Nail on the head here KC. So much so you've rendered my next off-season deep-dive almost insufficient!

liz · Dec 3, 2023

Warner received a lot more attention from opponents in 2023 than previously. Even when he didn’t have a close tag it was clear that opponents were more aware of his tricks and knew how to blunt them.

That’s something almost all potential game breakers have to deal with at some stage. The challenge for him is to grow his toolkit so he’s harder to stop.

He might benefit in 2024 by opposition teams making Gulden their primary target but he still needs to evolve his game to reach the top echelon of players. That’s perfectly normal. He’s still young.

Kiama Chris · Dec 3, 2023

liz said:
Warner received a lot more attention from opponents in 2023 than previously. Even when he didn’t have a close tag it was clear that opponents were more aware of his tricks and knew how to blunt them.

That’s something almost all potential game breakers have to deal with at some stage. The challenge for him is to grow his toolkit so he’s harder to stop.

He might benefit in 2024 by opposition teams making Gulden their primary target but he still needs to evolve his game to reach the top echelon of players. That’s perfectly normal. He’s still young.

I haven't investigated myself but others have said that his 2023 stats were actually better than 2022. But I think we would all agree that to the eye he made less impact. That is a direct result of what you refer to above, the extra attention, but I think also he got a bit careful, maybe trying a bit too hard to make his disposal perfect. I'm not certain of that but it is an impression I got. He got caught then too.

tombomb · Dec 3, 2023

I thought Warner's year was comparable to last year.

Expectations were too high from some areas (Brownlow medal) considering he is still a young player.

He has some things he needs to improve. He seemed to get caught holding the ball a lot this year. But other than that I think he is the least of our issues.

caesar88 · Dec 3, 2023

My off-season deep-dive number four is Chad Warner. And it seems this may end up touching on what others have so succinctly touched on above ^.

He’s an interesting case to me because he’s a player who has such a blatant and clear path to stardom – his signature acceleration off the mark – but also so many different ways his game can go wrong. Getting caught, doing too much, selfish plays, wasted opportunities, opposition pressure. For the most part so far in his career, he’s managed to avoid those pitfalls. But I think they’re real and they will probably always be a concern unless he can become something of an all-time great.

Players with a very distinct and predictable one wood that their game relies on can go many different ways. For every Dusty or Dangerfield, there is a De Goey or a Stringer, a still-good but budget version who is often as unsuccessful at using his one wood as he is successful at it. It feels like Warner is currently in that tier, which is certainly no insult to him. Neither De Goey or Stringer are bad players, and De Goey in particular proved this year he can be a more consistent contributor to end up a star player for a premiership team. But they can be frustrating for fans. At any given time in any given match, they can feel like the worst player on the field, or the best; a liability, or a matchwinner.

I wonder then if this rollercoaster of form will make Warner want to evolve his game somewhat.

One thing all of those players with a similar sort of game as Warner – Dusty, Dangerfield, De Goey, Stringer – share in common is that they’re all built like brick shithouses. Warner, comparatively, is not. And at 185cm and 82kg, it’s hard to envision how he’s ever going to be.

The thing that I don’t think any Swans fan could deny right now is that he is the easiest Swans mid to stop in his tracks or bring to ground, and that’s in a midfield that includes Parker (who has never had pace), Rowbottom (who has the lowest BMI of the lot) and Gulden (a dwarf compared to some guys he’s up against most weeks.) That’s not a title Warner would like having, given the way he likes to play. It’s not that there’s no point being a matchwinner one week and then struggling to positively impact the next – we’ll take any matchwinners we can get. But if there’s a way to hone his attributes into a more adaptable and consistent style of play, it’s worth exploring.

Which brings me to the photos of Warner from pre-season so far. He looks noticeably slimmer. Not the bulked-up bull that some fans were hoping he’d become. Could we see it accompanied by a change in his game better suited to his body? If you look at players who dominated this year – his mate Gulden, Nick Daicos, Zak Butters, Zac Bailey – they all have acceleration, but they’re less likely to use it to tear away from packs in straight sprints as they’re not really powerful enough, and more likely to use it to spin and pivot and stay on the move in and around contests.

In other words, get to more contests and have lots of little involvements that impact, rather than trying to go for the one big involvement and not always impacting. It's more fool-proof. At the minute, it feels like teams know as soon as Warner gets the ball, he’s going to try and get onto that straight line and charge off. They don’t even need to sit anyone on him to stop this because any player in his vicinity knows what he’s going to do. In a sense you don’t have to block the player, you just have to block his space.

There must’ve been times he watched Gulden this year and thought the way Gulden plays is a more economical and effective use of his pace than how he was trying to play. It may not look like it, because they’re not arching their back and trying to blaze away, but those guys like Gulden are playing with constant speed and movement, buzzing around in the contest and keeping the ball moving forward as much as any bee line sprint does.

It's a style of play I could really see Warner adapting to nicely. It works better for players like Gulden & Rowbottom, who have a good first step of pace but don’t have Warner’s raw sprinting pace, so no reason it can’t also work for Warner.

And this is not to say that it would rule out those moments of Warner tearing away into an open 50 for a running goal as he’s done a few times to win us over. When the chance is there and he’s got the space, he’d be a fool not to take it. It would simply be an adjustment of his inside game, how he thinks and reacts when he gets the ball and that space isn’t there.

Of course this is purely just guess work. I’m only hypothesizing based on ways I personally think Warner can improve his game and become the player we all have faith he can be. The discussion above proves many of us see consistency as the key for Warner, though may have varying ideas on how he can achieve it. But I’ll be keeping a close eye on how he decides to use his body when he gets the ball during the pre-season games. If rather than try and barge straight through oncoming tacklers and backing in his raw speed and power, if he’ll instead try to be more creative, more nifty around the contest.

If not, and I’m totally barking up the wrong tree, that is also OK. As I said earlier, Warner’s current level is probably somewhere between De Goey and Stringer, and he does a good job in it. If that’s the best we get from him, that’s hardly something to complain about. If we can get better from him, then I think that’s a real bonus.

Kiama Chris · Dec 3, 2023

caesar88 said:
My off-season deep-dive number four is Chad Warner. And it seems this may end up touching on what others have so succinctly touched on above ^.

He’s an interesting case to me because he’s a player who has such a blatant and clear path to stardom – his signature acceleration off the mark – but also so many different ways his game can go wrong. Getting caught, doing too much, selfish plays, wasted opportunities, opposition pressure. For the most part so far in his career, he’s managed to avoid those pitfalls. But I think they’re real and they will probably always be a concern unless he can become something of an all-time great.

Players with a very distinct and predictable one wood that their game relies on can go many different ways. For every Dusty or Dangerfield, there is a De Goey or a Stringer, a still-good but budget version who is often as unsuccessful at using his one wood as he is successful at it. It feels like Warner is currently in that tier, which is certainly no insult to him. Neither De Goey or Stringer are bad players, and De Goey in particular proved this year he can be a more consistent contributor to end up a star player for a premiership team. But they can be frustrating for fans. At any given time in any given match, they can feel like the worst player on the field, or the best; a liability, or a matchwinner.

I wonder then if this rollercoaster of form will make Warner want to evolve his game somewhat.

One thing all of those players with a similar sort of game as Warner – Dusty, Dangerfield, De Goey, Stringer – share in common is that they’re all built like brick shithouses. Warner, comparatively, is not. And at 185cm and 82kg, it’s hard to envision how he’s ever going to be.

The thing that I don’t think any Swans fan could deny right now is that he is the easiest Swans mid to stop in his tracks or bring to ground, and that’s in a midfield that includes Parker (who has never had pace), Rowbottom (who has the lowest BMI of the lot) and Gulden (a dwarf compared to some guys he’s up against most weeks.) That’s not a title Warner would like having, given the way he likes to play. It’s not that there’s no point being a matchwinner one week and then struggling to positively impact the next – we’ll take any matchwinners we can get. But if there’s a way to hone his attributes into a more adaptable and consistent style of play, it’s worth exploring.

Which brings me to the photos of Warner from pre-season so far. He looks noticeably slimmer. Not the bulked-up bull that some fans were hoping he’d become. Could we see it accompanied by a change in his game better suited to his body? If you look at players who dominated this year – his mate Gulden, Nick Daicos, Zak Butters, Zac Bailey – they all have acceleration, but they’re less likely to use it to tear away from packs in straight sprints as they’re not really powerful enough, and more likely to use it to spin and pivot and stay on the move in and around contests.

In other words, get to more contests and have lots of little involvements that impact, rather than trying to go for the one big involvement and not always impacting. It's more fool-proof. At the minute, it feels like teams know as soon as Warner gets the ball, he’s going to try and get onto that straight line and charge off. They don’t even need to sit anyone on him to stop this because any player in his vicinity knows what he’s going to do. In a sense you don’t have to block the player, you just have to block his space.

There must’ve been times he watched Gulden this year and thought the way Gulden plays is a more economical and effective use of his pace than how he was trying to play. It may not look like it, because they’re not arching their back and trying to blaze away, but those guys like Gulden are playing with constant speed and movement, buzzing around in the contest and keeping the ball moving forward as much as any bee line sprint does.

It's a style of play I could really see Warner adapting to nicely. It works better for players like Gulden & Rowbottom, who have a good first step of pace but don’t have Warner’s raw sprinting pace, so no reason it can’t also work for Warner.

And this is not to say that it would rule out those moments of Warner tearing away into an open 50 for a running goal as he’s done a few times to win us over. When the chance is there and he’s got the space, he’d be a fool not to take it. It would simply be an adjustment of his inside game, how he thinks and reacts when he gets the ball and that space isn’t there.

Of course this is purely just guess work. I’m only hypothesizing based on ways I personally think Warner can improve his game and become the player we all have faith he can be. The discussion above proves many of us see consistency as the key for Warner, though may have varying ideas on how he can achieve it. But I’ll be keeping a close eye on how he decides to use his body when he gets the ball during the pre-season games. If rather than try and barge straight through oncoming tacklers and backing in his raw speed and power, if he’ll instead try to be more creative, more nifty around the contest.

If not, and I’m totally barking up the wrong tree, that is also OK. As I said earlier, Warner’s current level is probably somewhere between De Goey and Stringer, and he does a good job in it. If that’s the best we get from him, that’s hardly something to complain about. If we can get better from him, then I think that’s a real bonus.

Nice dive. Also summarises a lot that has been said through the season too (nothing wrong with that!) and what our hopes for him are. Given the work that Chad has put into his game so far in his career I'm firmly of the belief that he will do the necessary to evolve in the direction you hope for, especially as he has examples and should have more support within the team to do so.
I believe Chad will have a bigger 2024 than 2023 as will the team. If we can get the outside mids firing inside 50 WATCH OUT!

liz · Dec 3, 2023

I don’t want Chad playing like Gulden or Rowbottom. Even the thought of him trying to fills me with horror. We have Errol and James to play like Errol and James.

I want him to play like Chad. I want him to use the power in his legs to break through traffic because when it works it opens up scoring opportunities in the blink of an eye. It won’t always work. We have to accept that. He just needs to get more experience and better learn when to try and when not to. But he’ll still get caught. Sometimes.

He did show a lack of awareness at times in 2023, thinking he had more time than he had once he’d broken through one tackle. So better awareness, yes. Improved decision making, yes. More experience, yes.

But he still needs to be Chad.

The one criticism that I think can be fairly levelled at him (and for which age and experience are no excuse) is his defensive stuff. He picks and chooses when to chase. Some of his tackles are half-hearted. And he can look flat-footed when the opposition wins the ball.

Del198236 · Dec 4, 2023

caesar88 said:
The thing that I don’t think any Swans fan could deny right now is that he is the easiest Swans mid to stop in his tracks or bring to ground

I deny it.

Are you comparing him to Dusty and DeGoey or Gulden and Butters? As Liz said above, He's Chad.
His strengths to his game are different to all the other players you mention and different and complimentary to the Swans other mids and his role on game day reflects this.
Looking forward to another step forward.. a few more goals and a few more broken tackles as he bursts from stoppages.

caesar88 · Dec 4, 2023

liz said:
I don’t want Chad playing like Gulden or Rowbottom. Even the thought of him trying to fills me with horror. We have Errol and James to play like Errol and James.

I want him to play like Chad. I want him to use the power in his legs to break through traffic because when it works it opens up scoring opportunities in the blink of an eye. It won’t always work. We have to accept that. He just needs to get more experience and better learn when to try and when not to. But he’ll still get caught. Sometimes.

He did show a lack of awareness at times in 2023, thinking he had more time than he had once he’d broken through one tackle. So better awareness, yes. Improved decision making, yes. More experience, yes.

But he still needs to be Chad.

The one criticism that I think can be fairly levelled at him (and for which age and experience are no excuse) is his defensive stuff. He picks and chooses when to chase. Some of his tackles are half-hearted. And he can look flat-footed when the opposition wins the ball.

Learning aspects of another player's game in an area where they are superior to you to improve your own game doesn't mean you become that player.

Players looking at the kicking technique of Errol Gulden doesn't mean they're going to become Errol Gulden but it can make them better kicks.

Kiama Chris · Dec 4, 2023

SGBeach said:
I deny it.

Are you comparing him to Dusty and DeGoey or Gulden and Butters? As Liz said above, He's Chad.
His strengths to his game are different to all the other players you mention and different and complimentary to the Swans other mids and his role on game day reflects this.
Looking forward to another step forward.. a few more goals and a few more broken tackles as he bursts from stoppages.

He gets stopped because he tries more often. Perhaps too often. A number of posters have suggested he needs to improve his decision making in those situations but certainly not stop doing those things altogether. He'll learn.

Grand Uncle Horace · Dec 4, 2023

Kiama Chris said:
He gets stopped because he tries more often. Perhaps too often. A number of posters have suggested he needs to improve his decision making in those situations but certainly not stop doing those things altogether. He'll learn.

Aye. More experience will help his decisions of whether to go the burst or to quickly give off.

Swansujelly · Dec 4, 2023

People were saying similar things about Blakey early on, and he still gets caught, but would we want him, or Chad, to stop trying?

the hypnotoad · Dec 4, 2023

Swansujelly said:
People were saying similar things about Blakey early on, and he still gets caught, but would we want him, or Chad, to stop trying?

nope
florent is another
we need players prepared to back themselves and take the game on ...
obviously it won't always come off but in this team the rewards are worth the risks

Kiama Chris · Dec 4, 2023

the hypnotoad said:
nope
florent is another
we need players prepared to back themselves and take the game on ...
obviously it won't always come off but in this team the rewards are worth the risks

Yep, not stop, just get better at doing it and judging when. Continuous improvement.

The King! · Dec 4, 2023

Warner taking the game on is great, but he has to make smarter decisions, he also is lazy on defence at times.

If every player was as great as some here think, we should be winning flags more often.

Our midfield group was disappointing in 2023

the hypnotoad · Dec 4, 2023

The King! said:
Warner taking the game on is great, but he has to make smarter decisions, he also is lazy on defence at times.

If every player was as great as some here think, we should be winning flags more often.

Our midfield group was disappointing in 2023

oh man, you know i like most of what you post ... but you're dismissing players as if where they are right now is all they'll ever be ...
we've got so much young talent, so many potentially outstanding individuals, but they're young and still developing ... and the best thing (for the club!) is that they're developing as a group ... which hopefully means the sum of the parts is even better
gulden, warner, blakey, mcinerney, mcdonald, mclean, sheldrick, mccartin et al ... even mills and florent ... they're not the finished product yet, and several of that lot have years of improving football ahead of them
just because they are so talented does not mean premierships are a foregone conclusion from the first years of their careers
this process takes time, we all know that ... and even with a collection of talent there's no guarantee of team success ... just look at brisbane, with the talent they've built up over the past 5-6 years, from a period where they were a laughing stock
i've said for three years i think our talent and our development have similarities to that brisbane team
and our progress has similarities to the geelong team of about 2004
i think we're very much on the right path

and yes, of course most of our players have areas they can improve on, but that's the case for just about every player in the league (ok, not errol)

Kiama Chris · Dec 4, 2023

the hypnotoad said:
oh man, you know i like most of what you post ... but you're dismissing players as if where they are right now is all they'll ever be ...
we've got so much young talent, so many potentially outstanding individuals, but they're young and still developing ... and the best thing (for the club!) is that they're developing as a group ... which hopefully means the sum of the parts is even better
gulden, warner, blakey, mcinerney, mcdonald, mclean, sheldrick, mccartin et al ... even mills and florent ... they're not the finished product yet, and several of that lot have years of improving football ahead of them
just because they are so talented does not mean premierships are a foregone conclusion from the first years of their careers
this process takes time, we all know that ... and even with a collection of talent there's no guarantee of team success ... just look at brisbane, with the talent they've built up over the past 5-6 years, from a period where they were a laughing stock
i've said for three years i think our talent and our development have similarities to that brisbane team
and our progress has similarities to the geelong team of about 2004
i think we're very much on the right path

and yes, of course most of our players have areas they can improve on, but that's the case for just about every player in the league (ok, not errol)

Even Errol.

Nuggetz · Jan 17, 2024

BROWNLOW & NORMSMITH INCOMING

liz · Jan 17, 2024

Nuggetz said:
BROWNLOW & NORMSMITH INCOMING

The second effort would probably have been (should have been) a free kick to Heeney.

Kiama Chris · Jan 17, 2024

liz said:
The second effort would probably have been (should have been) a free kick to Heeney.

Probably correct but great to see the intensity.

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