I wonder how the AFL feel about...

[Mr Ripper]

...the way the Swans are playing their football at the minute?

You'd like to think they'd play a brand of football likely to attract new supporters to the game, not drive people away in droves.

I always thought Mick's Eagles were a bit of a yawn to watch - stand back, we have a noo champeen!

 

[Dan26]

The Eagles might have been a yawn to watch, but they packed out Subiaco on a regular basis because thy were winners.

The Sydney Swans were winners in 1996, and they packed out the SCG on a regular basis. Rodney Eade still employs the same style of play (i.e a structured, disciplined, flooding style) in 2001 as they did in 1996 (generally speaking), but they havn't got the talent they had 5 years ago to make it work. Consequently it looks ugly and inept,at times. But lets face it, they don't look any more inept than Fremantle do they?

But really, if the Swans were winning, the Sydney-Siders would support them in droves. What they need in Sydney is a culling of their playing list. It is old and stale. The Swannies were always a pretty good team to watch in their hey-day and I'm sure the only reason they don't play as attractively now, is that they simply aren't capable of doing so.

 

[Bloodstained Angel]

Basically agree with Dans' critique there

A succession of poor decisions have finally caught up with the Swans thgis season and we have been rather cruelly exposed as a team full of has beens, wannabes, and never were's.

We have postponed a much needed overhaul at Sydney for a few seasons now. WE got Lockett and Roos up here in the hope of 'pinching a flag' - we came close in 1996 but by the and of 98 we should have realised that the gamble hadn't paid off and it was time to rebuild and start again.

That year we traded away some players for some draft picks and picked by Adam Goodes (among others). But we didn't carry on the recruiting policy into 99, 00 and now 01. Instead of going for young players, we picked up guys like Brett Allison, Stephen Tingay, Andrew Bomford, Ryan O'Connor, Scott Russell, Simon Feast and Paul Williams.

With the possible exception of Williams, all of these picks have been disasterous for us. We made the same mistake year after year. We still cliung to the hope that we could somehow 'pinch a flag' with what we had, all we needed was a couple of 'top up' players every now anbd again and the same old warhorses could do it for us.

Silly, I reckon. What the bains trust at Sydney failed to realise that whilst they were so desperate to 'pinch a flag' - the players that they expected to do it for them were suddenly too old, too slow, too unfit and too prone to injury to be competitive anymore.

So while we fritted away valuable opportunities to re-build the team, The likes of Kelly, Maxfield, Schwass and Cresswell struggled more and more with injury, loss of form and loss of pace.

Now in 2001 Sydney finds itself with the oldest list in the AFL, a group of youngsters who are under-done and a distinct lack of talent through the entire list.

Compunding our problems has been a bad run of injuries to Paul Kelly (has not been fully fit since Round 16, 1998), and our No. 1 ruckman Greg Stafford has completely failed to realise his enormous potential.

Lif up forward post-Lockett has been tough as well. Rodney could point to the fact that the Swans kick more goals now than when we had Lockett but thats not the point - the lack of a strong marking FF with a good accurate kick for goal has been the worst part of our game (or lack thereof) since 99. In this regard Jason Ball has to considered a major dissappointment.

So, Season 2001 for the Swans is when a few of our chickens have come home to roost.

Fiddling and tinkering with an already old and barely competitive list over the last few years has left us badly exposed in a competition that has moved on substantially since 1996.

Sydney has been left behind and is now paying the price accordingly.

cheers

 

[Unregistered]

Unfortunately this is all too true.

The Swans are playing an unattractive style of footy poorly.

The skill level against Geelong was deplorable. Absolute inability to gather clean possesion or dispose of the ball to a teammate (you know - the other guys wearing red and white).

I spent the entire journey home discussing who should be cut / traded at the end of the year. I'd hoped not to be doing it this early in the season.