Why can't "WE" just be CALM with the ball?

[The bulldog tragician]

We are the team that managed to lose a match in Geelong in 2021 when we were in front with a stoppage in our forward half and 30 seconds to run.

I shudder to think of whether if McLean kicked the goal last Friday how we would have played out the remaining seconds.

these things are fixable, surely. I remember after we blew the lead v Adelaide in the 2015 EF, Bevo made it clear that it was something we had to address and that we examined and as we saw in PF 2016, lessons were learnt.

[Happy Days]

Great post and a big reason why my brain won’t let me be as stoked with Friday as I want to be.

I’m willing to give a little bit of slack because in amongst all of the errors there was some excellence (specifically Bramble somehow cleaning up that horrible Coffield kick - when you’re hot you’re hot I guess), we were completely gassed by a really physical game and an illogical five day break into interstate travel, and above all else we did do enough to put ourselves into a position to ice it if everyone had’ve shown composure instead of just most of them.

I think it would make for a pretty easy teachable moment.

[Mantis]

Whilst this madness was playing out a large portion of the Swans fans were making their way to the exits.

Like we’re trying to gift you the game through our poor decision making and skill execution, and you’re all leaving? It says a little about the fan experience at the SCG.

[dog town]

It’s not just at the end of games it’s at the end of quarters as well. We don’t control the clock or field position at the level we should and it costs us goals.

I’ve seen them train these scenarios during match sim and to be honest it isn’t that difficult to understand anyway. Decisions on when to hold the ball, when to find a mark and when to keep it skinny are something even community footy sides can execute. It’s a lack of on field leadership and it’s alarming.

[doggies ftw]

This is not something for which we train. Saw scenario training only once in recent years, at Skinner Reserve, and frankly it was a schemozzle.

That’s very disappointing, it’s clearly something we’ve shown over the past few years we need to train for. Collingwood for example put a lot of time into it and look how it’s paid off for them.

You just need to have very calculated, trained, methods to how to deal with certain situations.

I will say that this team is extremely inexperienced and this is something which comes with experience - we’re running what, 7-9 players a week with under 50 games experience.

But I will also add that this is something we’ve never done well under Bevo, so I’m loath to blame the current players when it’s been happening for years well before most of their time, and even more so if you say we don’t really train for it from what you’ve seen.

Ive said it a number of times but we just need to have different modes we can switch between, when you’re watching teams kick goal after goal on us out the back in a massive blast of momentum, yet our defence keeps pushing higher & higher and more & more offensive it drives me crazy. Just lock down the game for 5 mins, settle deep in defence, kick the ball around and kill some clock whilst we adjust around the ball ffs. Not locking down on opposition players goes to this too.

another one you see a lot from us, we’ll kick 5 goals in 15 mins to open the quarter - but by the end of the qtr it’s 5goals to 4 etc and all the good work unravelled. It’s because we think we can go on and kick 8, 9. Our players run even harder offensively when our tails are up, our defensive press gets more and more aggressive. In reality we should be consolidating after those patches, manage the clock and reset a little bit to go again.

our one wood and our ‘go to’ game is elite, best in the comp. But we NEED to be able to adapt to different phases in game when things aren’t going well and this is something Bevo clearly needs help with IMO, and until we start putting in plans to fix this we’re always going to struggle to kill games and you’ll always have a tough record in close games against teams that are well drilled for these situations

[Danjul]

Great post and a big reason why my brain won’t let me be as stoked with Friday as I want to be.

I’m willing to give a little bit of slack because in amongst all of the errors there was some excellence (specifically Bramble somehow cleaning up that horrible Coffield kick - when you’re hot you’re hot I guess), we were completely gassed by a really physical game and an illogical five day break into interstate travel, and above all else we did do enough to put ourselves into a position to ice it if everyone had’ve shown composure instead of just most of them.

I think it would make for a pretty easy teachable moment.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the lack of composure appeared earlier. The main reason Sydney was in the game in the first quarter was turnovers from our backmen. I thought the players were better in the second half.