The Opposition Factor

Respected AFL journalist, Mike Sheehan, recently interviewed Sydney Swans coach, Paul Roos, for his show on Fox Sports called ‘Open Mike’.

They covered many topics from his career as a player with Fitzroy to his decision to retire as head coach and hand over the reigns to assistant coach, John Longmire. One topic in particular caught my attention, it was the perception that the Swans have a negative and ‘ugly’ game plan.

I have some good friends that get carried away with this notion and even go as far as to say that they “hate” the Swans due to their style of play. I take offense to this allegation as it is baseless.

The Swans were a very successful team during the Paul Roos era of 2003 -2007. As a successful team there is always an opposition wanting to beat you week after week. Teams now are well prepared in working out how to negate the game plan of the opposition.

Roos points out that “people fail to see that there’s an opposition”. Watch them at training, “If it’s 18 on zero we’ll bring it down the corridor every time”. They don’t practice ‘ugly’ football. Of course they have played some shocking games of football, Mike Sheehan used an example against St Kilda. But it is no different to any other team. They have all used negative tactics and have produced ‘ugly’ football.

So why are the Swans singled out? Who knows? Who cares? People who bag my team should instead look at their own team and pump them up instead of hating the Swans.

A Free Kick Against You, For Being Barry Hall

Sydney Swans player, Barry Hall, is in a tough situation. He has a reputation of being the bad boy that precedes him into games. It seems impossible for umpires to view him in even a neutral way. This is unfair, and opposition players take full advantage by coxing him into random acts of frustration.

Hall is the most picked on player in the AFL. He is able to be wrestled like WWE Smackdown and receive no free kicks yet the glamour full forwards like Lance Franklin and Matthew Lloyd only need a finger nail to grace their shoulder for a free kick to be awarded.

He is now giving away free kicks and 50 metre penalties on the suspicion that he has done something wrong. Such as the momentum shifting incident with Jarryd Roughead, when it appeared Roughead ran into Hall’s outstretched arms for a second 50-metre penalty to be awarded and a certain goal the result. Also, once giving away the first 50-metre penalty no less than six Hawks players got into his face egging him on. Of course he is going to push and shove.

Barry is hard done by, although he does himself no favours in his remonstrations no matter how justified he may be. Umpires tend to not change their minds and go on to adjudicate more harshly on the remonstrators.

I feel for Barry. But to a large degree he created this and now he has to live with it.

Negative Tigers Almost Steal It

Round 2
Richmond 11.6 (72) def by Sydney 13.10 (88)
Melbourne Cricket Ground

A lot of AFL supporters would say that Sydney is the most negative team with the possession type of football they play. What most people won’t tell you is that most of the time it is the opposition that forces Sydney to show some patience and chip the ball around to free options instead of the bombing away into the forward 50. This usually results in a turnover and also gives the opposition a good chance to drive on a counter attack from their half back line.

Strong negative tactics from the opposition force possession footy, such as:

• The Flood – where at times you will find the whole team in their defensive 50m
• Heavy tags – where the sole objective of a player is to make sure their opposing player doesn’t get possession of the ball and execute effective disposals. Usually tagging players don’t get a touch themselves, as they are so pre occupied with the player and not the ball
• Loose men in the backline – this is sacrificing one of your forwards and having him camp in front of the opposition’s key leading forward and also provides drive from halfback because he essentially has no opponent.

Richmond performed all these negative tactics against Sydney in the first half. It almost worked as it chokes the opposition from playing the way they would normally play. Teams react differently to this course of action. Some change how they play to regain the upper hand. Other teams might panic and make rash decisions as the pressure on the ball carrier becomes too intense. This happened to Adelaide last season when they were the in form team competition. They had their wings clipped by the negating tactics of Richmond who went on to have one of their very few wins of the season. It looked dangerously like history would repeat itself, especially considering Sydney are perennial slow starters to the season. This time class was to prevail, but the Swans let Richmond have a sniff in the last only to kick the last three goals of the match to take it out by 16 points.

It is frustrating as a viewer as you want the ball to keep moving but you also want your team to have possession and to ultimately win at the end of the day. Inevitably you might hear Swans fans shout out, “Just kick it!” These people probably don’t understand what I have just outlined. Yet their frustration is understandable.

Injury concerns for Barry Hall. Reports are that he has a partial tear to the medial ligament of his knee. It’s minor in comparison to what can happen to knees. Adam Goodes played most of a season with an injured medial ligament so who knows. My tip is 1 to 2 weeks, as we need him right for the business end of the season.

Swans New Recruits

Footy season may be over but there is still plenty going on for those of us interested in the off field occurrences, and I’m not talking about the stories in the gossip pages of footballers late night escapades. On Saturday 25th November all clubs met at the Telstra Dome in Melbourne for NAB National AFL Draft. It is where all the young players in Australia hope to be recruited by AFL clubs. Positions in the draft are generally determined by where you finish that season, although the order might change after teams decide to trade draft picks for current players during the trade week. Sydney obviously finished second so they have later picks in each round.

The player they ended up choosing are:
15 – DANIEL O'KEEFE, Geelong Falcons Vic (pictured)
Good sized midfielder
49 – DANIEL CURRIE, Northern Knights Vic
Developing ruckman
65 – PETER FAULKS, Calder Cannons Vic
Key defender
79 – JESSE WHITE, Southport Qld
Future key position player

Look out for these young men, as they are the future of your club.

Coaches Exodus

The Sydney Swans under Head Coach Paul Roos had three Assistant Coaches: Ross Lyon, John Longmire and Peter Jonas. Two of whom have now left. It seems that we have become a victim of our own success as all our assistants are highly sought after by other clubs.

Ross Lyon has been appointed head coach of St Kilda after previous coach, Grant Thomas, was sacked at season’s end. John Longmire was also in the race for this job but he will now stay at Sydney as it appears Paul Roos is trying to implement a bit of succession planning. Peter Jonas left to go back to his home state and become an assistant at the Adelaide Crows.

Amongst all the exodus though we have managed to pick up John Blakey who has played 330+ games and has been an Assistant coach under Leigh Matthews at the Brisbane Lions for the past 4 years.

Trade Farce

Good news folks, in a game full of bluffing that you would expect to see on the World Poker Tour, Peter Everitt was successfully traded from Hawthorn to Sydney. On Tuesday Paul Roos had offered his 2nd round draft pick, which was an advancement on his first offer. Hawthorn rejected saying that they now want our 1st and 2nd round picks. Roos wasn’t going to stand for this and decided to fly back to Sydney. I’m guessing he left some Sydney representatives down in Melbourne because with 4 minutes to go before the deadline the Hawthorn recruiting manager, Chris Pelchan, they approach the Swans ready to accept the offer made to them on Tuesday, a 2nd round draft pick.

This infuriated Roos, as he said to the Herald Sun:

"It could've been done two and a half days ago," Roos said. "It's ridiculous at four minutes to two o'clock they came in and said we'll take it.

"It (the whole trade week) is a farce."

When a club has a star player who wants out they want to get something for him so when Hawthorn had no-one else chasing Everitt’s services then they realised that the deal with the Swans was all they had.

In the end there were only 9 trades done all week, 7 of those were done on Friday. What i find funny is how fast they get their new recruits into the club's shirt for the cameras (see examples above). Trading period hasn't even been over for a day yet.

Hawks Humbug

I know no one really cares about this but I will write anyway.

AFL Trade Week is in action this week. As the proper season finished last week this is all I have to keep me excited for the summer. There is reason to be excited, as Sydney could potentially be involved in one of the bigger trades of the week. Hawthorn’s Peter Everitt has stated that he wants to come to Sydney because the Hawks won’t offer him more than a one-year contract. Yet they want Sydney’s 2nd round draft pick and a star young player for him. This sounds very contradictory as they obviously don’t rate Everitt that highly if they wouldn’t give him a decent contract yet they want to split up the 2nd best team in the competition and take a high draft pick. What side of the planet is Hawthorn living on? They are being completely unreasonable, not only to the Swans but also to the player they supposedly rate so highly, Peter Everitt. Hawthorn should take the 3rd round pick that they were offered then go home and have a good hard look at themselves. If I had a Tool of the Week award I would give it to the whole club.

Ah Well….

There's always next year

It was a good day despite the one point loss to West Coast in the “big dance.” Some people answered the call and came over to watch it, which was very nice. Everyone cheered at exactly the right times which is impressive.

Later on in the evening I felt like it was one of those moments that was “meant to happen.” I was downstairs sorting out some clothes while mum ironed and she had put on a Willie Nelson album, which were downtrodden heartbroken type songs. I thought there’s nothing like the power of song to lift someone’s spirits.

Swans Fanaticism

Yes, it’s true. I am a Sydney Swans Tragic. There, I have admitted it. It truly dawned on me last year when I gathered all my Swans merchandise together and realised that I have enough to clothe a small nation.

It all started back in 1993 when my mum wouldn’t let me play Rugby League (back then I was a Parramatta Eels tragic). I was small and not very tough. It was feared that I could get severely injured if I pursued playing this sport. Mum actually had some grounds for her concerns after a summer training clinic at Wenty Magpies as an 8 year old. She was also turned off by the mothers club on the sideline who were either smoking, yelling, or both.

The first game I watched was Sydney Vs Melbourne at the SCG in 1993. Unknown by me was the fact that Sydney were on a year long losing streak and Melbourne were one of the form teams of the competition. Dad bought me my first Swans jersey at that game (which I still have) and a 10 goal haul by Richard Osborne led to an emphatic Swans win and mass hysteria after breaking the losing streak. I guess I was hooked from then on.

The Super League dramas came at a time when I was just starting to get into the Swans, soon after my first game. It killed off any passion I may have had for League at the time. Plus Parramatta weren’t going too well at the time anyway.

It’s a struggle being the only fan of any AFL team in your whole school, and when your team loses, everyone wants a piece of you. Some people were so predictable. When the Swans lost this one person would always seek me out and ask the same question, “What happened to the Swans eh?” Of course he was expecting me to get worked up about the loss and get all emotional but instead I responded with, “They lost.” I never heard from him again, until their next lost.

Then came the year of the bandwagon, 1996. Suddenly it became cool and fashionable to support the Swans. (Some of you probably know what I think about things being fashionable). The season started ominously under new coach Rodney Eade (now coaching the Western Bulldogs), losing the first 3 games by healthy margins. Somehow it turned around and we had a lengthy winning streak. This was foreign to us and we had it in the back of our heads that we could go all the way. It was the fairytale story without the fairytale ending. The Swans made the Grand Final against North Melbourne whom we had beaten by 70+ points earlier in the year. Dad had somehow secured a package deal to get us to watch the grand final. He said it cost an arm and a leg. I never asked how much I actually cost, I don’t want to know. In the end we lost by about 40 points. Back at school, “What happened to the Swans eh??” “They lost” I replied for the last time.

So I have been a fan ever since. For about 6 years Dad and me were season ticket holders and would go to a least 10 games each season.

Sydney is a team that, in the space of a game, will give you hope and lose a game or make you lose hope and win a game. If dad were as big a fan as I am then he would have died of a heart attack already.

These days I’m more philosophical about a loss. I still feel depressed but it’s nowhere near as long as when I was a young teenager, and a loss doesn’t involve tears anymore. However I think that if we had lost the 2005 grand final on the siren then the tears would have made an appearance.

Most people don’t understand, saying that it’s “only a game.” To those people it is hard to explain. I say, come to the footy and see what all the excitement is about. Come and see what keeps thousands of people on the edge of their seats for over 2 hours. Come to the footy.