Disappointing.
That’s the keyword for the night for the Swans. There are a few other words running through my mind: annoying, frustrating, maddening, insipid... the list goes on.
This must be a schizophrenic football team. It’s the only solid explanation I have for what transpired on a truly ugly night at AAMI Stadium in Adelaide where the rain poured, where the wind howled, and where a team in fourteenth riding a six-game losing streak – a team in tatters, ripped by the media, a team with a coach on the hottest of all imaginable hot seats – beat a team in seventh place, who had run the all-conquering reigning premiers to within one kick of victory last week.
A win would’ve put the Swans in sixth, ahead of Fremantle, and ahead of a hungry pack of steadily-improving football gunning for a spot in the top eight, gunning for our spot in the top eight. Instead, when they needed a performance like last week’s, the Swans have turned up to Adelaide and generally messed it up. Tonight’s effort was bad as any I’ve seen to lose a game that they probably should’ve won. Almost definitely should’ve won.
Knowing what sort of talent is on the field week in, week out for the Swans is what makes these losses so much more difficult to stomach. Fine, if we had a junk list, I wouldn't get so upset and so annoyed, but the fact is that we have a pretty good football team, but they seem to only want to show it every second or third week. What we need – what any football team hoping to win a premiership needs – is a four quarter contest every week. Look at where it’s gotten Collingwood and Geelong and Hawthorn in recent years.
In some ways, tonight’s football game was like the one the Swans put in against Richmond at the SCG a few weeks ago. Except that they won that contest. Tonight, it was a long, damp trudge off a ground where we’ve had little success in recent years. AAMI Stadium continues to be a graveyard for the Swans and the Adelaide Crows continue to be a bogey team. So much of past history, the stuff I referenced in my preview blog, happened tonight.
The rain, of course, is a great equaliser in football – the great equaliser. It probably helped the Crows stick with the Swans tonight, turning a contest from a multi-faceted affair to something much more black-and-white, making it simple. We used to be a pretty good wet-weather football team, but this year three losses that I vividly recall for all the wrong reasons have occurred in the wet: Geelong, Carlton and, now, Adelaide.
The horrendous kicking display by the Swans – a worrying trend that John Longmire will want to look at through the week – undoubtedly helped. There was a stretch in the game leading up to Bevan’s late goal where the Swans had gone inside 50 26 times for 11 points, not having kicked a major score since midway through the second quarter.
Sadly, there were too many big-time players on the Swans team who went missing at crucial times in the football game, when the four points were definitely up for grabs. With that in mind, it will be very interesting at selection time this week to see what changes John Longmire might make. I’m sure the makeup of the team for next week will be on the mind of the Horse as he endures a frustrating flight home to Sydney. Media scrutiny should be interesting, too.
Up next, the Gold Coast Suns. Before that game, before a trip north of the border, the Swans need to have a good hard look at themselves, and try to recapture the form we showed against Collingwood last week, or this season, promising up until the calendar turned from May to June, might just slip away.
Disappointing.
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