What’s Best for Business?
Congratulations to the Brisbane Lions, who were simply too good for the Swans on the day. In simple terms, Chris Fagan successfully concentrated on shutting down the Swans’ two match-winners, Issac Heeney and Tom Papley – Chapeau.
Introduction
HB Meyers, our benevolent leader at The Mongrel Punt, strongly advised me to wait a few days before I wrote this article after I sent him a message midway through the second quarter of the Grand Final stating I was totally frustrated by the Swans’ performance. Totally frustrated was an understatement, as I was in the middle of full-on meltdown tantrum. I nearly took out an intervention against myself, such was my rage.
It has taken me two months to fully comprehend and define why the Sydney Swans meekly capitulated in the second quarter of the Grand Final, and why for the second time in three years, the last Saturday of September proved to be the day the AFL’s great pretenders were exposed.
The Great Pretenders – Fraudsters
This is a harsh criticism, but sports history is littered with teams that had the polish but failed to deliver on the Grandest stage. The most famous losing streak in world sports probably belongs to the Buffalo Bills, who lost four NFL Super Bowls between 1991to 1994, and they have never been able to get back to the promised land since. In Baseball, the curse of the Babe haunted the Boston Red Sox from 1918 to 2004, and at the end of the 2003 divisional playoffs after another defeat at the hands of the New York Yankees they were described as the Baseball’s greatest frauds. England’s inability to win a major European or World Cup since 1966 is also seen as another example sports eternal legacy of damning the could-have-beens.
In the AFL, Geelong was the almost champions from 1989 to 1995, making four Grand Finals only to be obliterated at the final hurdle on each occasion. The promising Port Adelaide team of the 2000’s, who won the flag in 2004, were beaten by a record margin by an all-conquering Geelong team in 2007 and try as they might, they have not been the same team since. The same could be said about the Power Stance Adelaide Crows of 2017.
The Swans now join the list of almost champions, with Luke Hodge literally laughing as his Hawks destroyed the favoured Swans in 2014, while the romanticism surrounding the Western Bulldogs overcame the more favoured Swans in 2016, in 2022 the all-conquering powerful Cats destroyed the Swans in the first ten minutes of the match, and this year the Brisbane Lions mesmerised the Swans in the most comprehensive second quarter blitz ever witnessed on the big stage. Other than the 2022 Super Cats, the Swans were the favoured team in the other three Grand Finals.
2014 and 2016 almost belong to another era now, and the reality was the Cats of 2022 were never going to be beaten in that Grand Final, so let’s deconstruct what went wrong in 2024.
The question must be asked; are the Sydney Swans the great pretenders in the AFL?
I firmly believe the basis of the Swans plummet from grace started after the mid-season bye, and the genesis of their slide cumulating in the Grand Final debacle can be traced back to Round 15.
The Great Western Sydney Giants times two
I reviewed the Round 15 win by the Swans over the GWS, and while it was the Swans’ tenth straight win in a row, I was highly critical of the manner of the win. While Garry Lyon called it a Super-Win, I looked deeper and realised that kind of win was covering up some major flaws in the Swans game style. My main point of contention, the Swans were beating teams in 20 minutes of power football, and sooner or later they would be exposed. The comments section of the article that day was not very complimentary, with some accusing me of having an anti-Sydney bias, however, I saw holes that day that needed to be addressed.
The following the week, the Swans lost to Fremantle by a point, then got outplayed by St Kilda, thumped an undermanned North Melbourne (flat track bully style), and then lost to the Brisbane Lions by two points in a match that may have put the finals beyond the Lions grasp, had they lost.
The Swans literally opened the door for the Lions to storm into the finals late in the season.
Once again, commentators were saying these were honourable losses, but what followed was the beginning of the end. Firstly, the Bulldogs thrashed the Swans by 39 points (it should have been more), and the following week Port Adelaide delivered the hammer blow that destroyed the Swans, when they unmercifully opened up every festering wound, exposed every weakness, and drove a stake straight through the Swans as they buried them by near-on 19 goals.
Sydney kind of recovered when they literally fell over the line against Collingwood with a stunning 20-minute burst of football, after being outplayed and headed all day. The end of season wins against the Bombers and the Crows could only be described as easy kills, as their seasons were already over.
Great Western Sydney II – the Qualifying Final
Sydney came into the Qualifying Final on top of the ladder and with some sense of form recovery after the Port Adelaide debacle, but in terms of high intensity, highly contested football, they had really played a mere 20-minutes of high-quality football in the Isaac Heeney-led revival against the Pies four weeks earlier.
The reality was the Swans’ form line coming into the finals was average at best.
For three quarters of the Qualifying Final, the GWS Giants outplayed the Swans, and at three-quarter time they held a healthy 21-point lead. Such was their dominance; it should have been more.
Then, for the second time this year against the Swans, GWS shat themselves and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Isaac Heeney and Chad Warner turned it on in the last quarter, the Giants faded badly, and once again the Swans won a game of football with a brilliant 20-minute burst of football. Like the Collingwood match, they dodged a bullet, but it may have been better if the bullet had hit them as they really needed a shake-up, and maybe taking the chance on losing in straight sets to go the long way around to the Grand Final may have been more beneficial.
There was a sense after the GWS game that it would just happen and when in trouble Isaac, Chad, Errol, and/or Tom would save the day.
Sydney went into the Preliminary Final relying on a real false economy of form, whereby they had not played a full four quarters of football for nearly ten weeks.
The Preliminary Final
Port Adelaide’s last hurrah for 2024 was beating Hawthorn in the Semi-Final, and they were ripe for the picking in the Preliminary Final. The Swans did enough to win the Prelim, but once again they failed to play four quarters of sustained football.
Sydney’s last quarter against the Power was safety-first football and as such, the Power outscored them. For crying out loud, the Power destroyed them a few weeks earlier, and Sydney owed them a real pumping, but instead they took their foot off the throttle.
The Swans switched off at three-quarter time, and possibly in the process switched off for the year. I thought at the time this team has no killer instinct.
On the other hand, the rising juggernaut of the season, the Brisbane Lions, played arguably their best football of the season in the last quarter of their Preliminary Final. They finished the game strongly as they out toughed a determined Geelong team. They looked primed.
Compare the two. Sydney resting players from midway through the third quarter, versus the Lions form peaking at precisely the right time of the year.
Other Factors That Cost the Swans
After the bye there were a number of other factors which eventually contributed to the Swans demise in the Grand Final, and before I gloss over the Grand Final they need to be mentioned.
Mad Monday Mills and ‘Kanga’ Parker
After the bye, there was much talk about how much the Swans will improve with the inclusions of Callum Mills and Luke Parker, yet at that point of the season, this team was playing the best brand of football I had ever witnessed from a Swans team prior to this season. Most deemed it essential that the Swans needed both Mills and Parker in the team, and they may have been right, but the mere conversation overlooked the 23 who had got the Swans to being four games and a massive percentage clear on top of the ladder at the midway mark of the season.
Suddenly Taylor Adams, Sam Wicks, Robbie Fox, and Braeden Campbell were under pressure to hold their spots, while fringe players like Corey Warner, Aaron Francis, Angus Sheldrick and others virtually knew they were no chance of selection in the lead up to the finals.
It is psychological, but I think the returns of Mills and Parker unsettled the balance of the team. I am saying this in hindsight, which is a luxury, but an established playing unit had to adapt to players coming back into the team and hopefully finding form. While Parker had his moments, it is arguable as to whether Mills should have sat the season out, as his form upon return was a mere shadow of the player from the year before.
Amartey, McDonald and McLean
A sceptic a lot wiser than most stated to me after the Port Adelaide loss the Swans cannot win the flag with Amartey, McDonald and McLean in the same forward line.
While all three had their moments during the season, it was becoming obvious by season’s end that the experiment of playing all three together in the same forward line was floundering and the Swans’ forward structure was starting to look impotent. Opposition backlines had worked them out to such an extent, they treated all three with contempt as they started attacking off their dropped marks, or clumsy mistakes.
The lack of form or presence by Amartey, McDonald and McLean meant the spark in the Swans forward line had to come from Tom Papley, and/or Will Hayward, and/or Isaac Heeney when he went forward, while the use of Luke Parker was only a plug to cover up the weaknesses of the big three.
The form dilemma surrounding Amartey, McDonald and McLean leads me to my next issue of the Swans form running into the finals, that being inflexibility of John Longmire over the last eight rounds of the season.
A One-Trick Horse
Before John Longmire retired recently, I was going to suggest he watched the 2012 Grand Final over and over and get his sense of risk taking back. The 2012 Premiership is Longmire’s greatest coaching achievement to date (I believe he will coach again) as he took risks, made moves and shuffled the game plan around as he outsmarted Alistair Clarkson on the day.
I have no doubt 2014, 2016 and 2022 shook his confidence, however, in season 2024 he had the opportunity to completely alter the Swans game plan well before the Finals.
Four wins adrift and a percentage break eight weeks before the finals is a luxury any coach would die for. The chess pieces can be moved around a bit and different game plans and scenarios can be experimented with; however, it seemed Horse wasn’t willing to, or couldn’t, change his gameplan.
John Longmire stated he struggled with the week-to-week the longer the 2024 season went, and that was part of the reason for his retirement. I praise him for his self-evaluation and honesty, but I wonder how much that affected his coaching late in the season?
From Round 15 onwards, it seemed Longmire was set on maintaining a certain gameplan and sticking by a select group of players. There was no real flexibility in his coaching as the team started to stagnate. Other teams worked them out. Other than dropping Taylor Adams (the unluckiest footballer in the AFL) in favour of Luke Parker, there was very little tangible change late in the season from the Horse.
Following that fateful Round 15 , the Swans did play one game whereby they dominated for a full four quarters, and this must have been noticed by the coach and the coaching staff. Further, it was apparent that the balance of Amartey, McDonald and McLean were not working, and they were not capable of tearing a game to pieces, or even just being a consistent presence.
I was laughed at when I suggested Aaron Francis could be a point of difference come September, and the Swans’ coaching staff obviously agreed, but when he did play, he did contest, he did take marks, and he had presence. Francis played off his opponent rather than his opponent playing off him. Corey Warner is another player the Swans could have experimented with heading towards the finals. Corey plays under the shadow of his more celebrated brother, but he reminds of Darryl ‘Baby’ Schimma, the younger brother of North Melbourne superstar Wayne Schimmelbusch, a tough player who has courage and a bit of pluck about him.
Horses can be stubborn creatures, and I think one of the faults of John Longmire in 2024 was to stubbornly stick by a certain gameplan and certain players.
(John Longmire has been South Melbourne/Sydney Swans most successful coach, and he has suffered the curse of all other coaches of the Red and White of not being able to achieve a second Premiership. Thanks for a wonderful and exciting 14 years.)
Sydney’s Front Running B Graders
When the chips are down, the team expected Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Errol Gulden, Tom Papley, Jake Lloyd and to a lesser extent, James Rowbottom and Nick Blakey (I will include the ageing Dame Rampe in this list) to pick up the slack. These are the players that regularly pulled the Swans back into matches. In essence, they are the ‘A’ listers, but what can be made of the Swans’ rung of players under that group who constantly get a game every week.
It is commonly thought most teams are as good as their bottom six, however, Sydney’s bottom six to eight players perform well, and at times exceed expectations. Good examples are the rise of Matt Roberts as a consistent performer in 2024 and the performance of Robbie Fox in the Grand Final. Sydney’s bottom listed players are as good as any in the competition, so I don’t have a problem with them, however, it is the Swans’ middle rung players who go missing when the blow torch is applied.
When was the last time the likes of Florent, Hayward, McInerney, Cunningham, Campbell, Melican, or the three big forwards, lifted when the ‘A’ listers were being well held, and led the team to victory? Possibly Campbell in the last quarter of the Qualifying Final, and Hayward against Brisbane at the Gabba, but aside from that I cannot remember a game where one of Sydney’s mid-level regulars literally took hold of a game, strangled the life out of it, and carried the team on their back.
During the second half of the season, the form of every ‘B’ and ‘C’ lister fell away from week-to-week consistency. They ended up displaying only spasmodic glimpses of what they are capable off. The only player to really play himself back into form late in the season was Brodie Grundy.
The Grand Final
Eye of Chad and toe of flog,
Pool of blood and tongue of Tom,
Joey’s fork and young’uns sting,
Lizards leg and Errol’s wing,
For a charm of Fagan’s trouble,
Red and white broth boil and bubble,
Double, Double toil and trouble,
Swans burn and Horse’s bubble.
Comparing the Swans’ loss to the tragedy of Macbeth may be a bit of a stretch, but the Swans were certainly bait for the Lions in the theatre that was the MCG on Grand Final Day 2024.
Honest truth, I barely watched the second half as I was in a total meltdown during the second quarter, yelling at my television, “at least bloody well try, they are just doing what they like”, and as I had seen this play before in 2022, I wasn’t prepared to watch it again as it came to the same grim conclusion.
In all seriousness, the Lions were as magnificent as the Swans were pathetic during the second quarter, and if I was a neutral supporter I would have been cheering them to just go for the kill – which they did. Everybody gets some morbid thrill watching a trainwreck unfold.
For all the reasons stated in the article, the Sydney Swans came into the 2024 Grand Final very much out of form and riding the crest of a wave of form based on a false economy. Brisbane exposed them, and then some.
I might be wrong, but I believe Fagan’s game plan was very simple; stop Heeney and stop Papley and the house of cards will come crumbling down. And that is exactly what happened.
How bloody good were the young Lions? Lohmann (the new Tony Modra of the AFL), Morris, Ashcroft, Fletcher, Wilmot, as well as Ah Chee, Rayner, Berry, Starcevich, Fort, and all the usual suspects who are already superstars. Special mention to Joey Daniher, well played and good luck.
A Prophecy of AFL Doom
The shift from Horse to Cox (sounds so naughty) is the right move for the Swans, and while I lament how my Bloods ended the season, they were near on impossible to beat for half a season. As such, Cox has a lot of talent to play with (even that sounds naughty).
To the angst and horror of all supporters of the AFL who do not follow the Swans, I firmly believe they will be there at the pointy end of season 2025 if Cox can get all the pieces to gel (still sounds naughty).
Comments will be made throughout next season that people don’t care who makes the Grand Final as long as it is not the Bloody Swans, but for diehard Swans supporters, a premiership is needed for redemption.
The only measurement of success for the Sydney Swans in season 2025 is to win the Premiership – with an 18-team competition that is no mean task and never can it be considered a fete accompli.
Dare I say it, I don’t believe we have seen the best of the Brisbane Lions, yet.
Good Luck to Horse and Joey!
