Autopsy Overrated midfield?

[stevierayswan]

I'm going to give our team the benefit of the doubt here & be a little generous with my thoughts on where we are at.
Last year ended with us running out of legs due to injuries etc.
This year has commenced 2 weeks early and many of our key players started playing games late & we've always been off our best form in the early rounds but just got away with it in the recent past. We have a policy where we don't play all our full team in the pre season games. One thing I noticed with the other teams that seem to be flying at the moment is that they played their full strength teams in these practice matches. The Hawks team that played Essendon the other night looked less experienced then the one that played in all the pre season games & I watched them closely. Same with West Coast, Port, Freo (in the last practice game), Richmond, Collingwood etc.

The Swans never had a settled lineup, perhaps due to having to experiment with the ruckmen.
These are the players that were underdone going into round 1 either due to missing big chunks of 2013 or pre season injuries.
LRT, Shaw, Pyke, Jetta, Reid, Mitchell & Rohan.
All these players have played one or both of our opening games.
They couldn't possibly have been at their peak fitness for these contests.
The score board backs this up. In both games scoring shots against in the final 5 mins of the third & in the last Qs were nearly the same as scoring shots for the first bulk of the match. A huge discrepancy.
This suggests our fitness is not there yet.
The loss to GWS came about from arrogance from the coaches where they chose to play underdone players that should have been coming back through the seconds until their fitness is at a required level. We also went with LRT as back up ruckman which was & always has been a fail.
This was done purely to find a role in the team for a well loved player.
Gary Rohan quite obviously can't play out games as he is still recovering from that horrific leg break.
Does Gaz not have "Super Sub" written all over him?
Geez Horse! Problem solved for 2014. Gary Rohan is our super sub for the whole year because he can't last out games & can be devestating in one Q of football when every other player is dragging their feet. Craig Bird is fit & has smarts.. Slow as treacle, but he makes up for it some what with his good skills.
What impact is Bird going to have as a sub?

Bird should start games in the middle. We recruited him as a in & under ball magnet as a youngster & he began his senior football in the same manner.
Same with Mitchell. Now here's the problem. There's no room for ROK because he is the same but a little slower as he's aged.
Yep! Fifth in our best & fairest last year but guess what? It happens overnight. If he can't play as a 2 or 3 goal a game marking forward that can lock the ball in, then there is no spot for him in the team. McGlynn's best role is as a small crumbing forward that doesn't let the ball out of our forward line.

We matched them or beat them in every area other then the score board. So in fact we played much better than in Rd 1.
We just played unfit players or players out of form just based on their reputation. Pyke is the only one that we had to risk playing under done.
We have replacements for Shaw,ROK, Rohan, LRT etc.
Shaw needed to play 3 or 4 games in the two's. Just like most other top teams would have their players do. I love Shaw but he ain't Hodge, Judd, Ablett or Goodes. They would be the only players I'd bring straight into the seniors because of their class.
Other than Goodes, we don't have anyone on our list that deserves those priviledges.

That'll do me for now!

This is brilliant. Now how can we get it to Horse