Adelaide’s Wayne Milera called them a “rabble”. Listening to the way the Swans players spoke, watching how they played and behaved, it was just a mess, he said.
Ordinarily this sort of comment from an opponent would be considered inflammatory and ungracious. It wasn’t. Milera was in fact, being kind. It wasn’t schadenfreude, it was understatement.
The Swans ponder their poor showing against Adelaide on Saturday night.Credit: via Getty Images
Sydney were, not for the first time this year but possibly for the worst time, just awful.
Dean Cox was bereft and disinclined to sugar-coat it when he spoke afterwards. It would have been unwise to do so, for everyone – especially those many disheartened Swans who left the SCG after half-time – knew what they had seen.
The grand final loss last year was horrendous and demanded the Swans forensically address what went wrong.
A slide after last season seemed to be coming, but not of this magnitude. Sure the magnitude of the drop might be explained by personnel, but the Swans shouldn’t kid themselves that this is all down to that.
The injuries to that trio, in particular, have helped peel the wallpaper off cracks that were already there. What’s been found underneath is a team that relies too heavily on its stars and whose role players are dead ordinary.
Fifteen players from the grand final played on Saturday night. One of those missing, Luke Parker, has since moved on to North Melbourne, so he won’t be coming back into the line-up. Taylor Adams missed the grand final only because of injury, and he was in Saturday night’s team.
Other top teams win without key players, or at the very worst, they find a way to compete. Sydney simply were not competitive after about 10 minutes of the first quarter on Saturday night.
The way the Swans were structured to defend, the way they failed to apply pressure, the way they turgidly moved the ball and the way they were haphazard in offering it to their impotent attack all point to issues beyond personnel.
As Wayne Milera said, they were a rabble.
In round 21 last year, Port Adelaide belted the Swans by 112 points. In hindsight, that was the Swan song more than the grand final embarrassment. In that round 21 game, they conceded 90 points from turnovers – one of their worst ever results – and things haven’t picked up much since. On Saturday night it was 88 points conceded from turnovers.
That is the sign of a side succumbing to pressure, a side hesitant and uncertain in how to move the ball and scrubby with their disposal when they do.
It does bear repeating that the Swans finished top of the ladder at the end of the last year’s home-and-away season.
But, for the sake of illustrating the magnitude of their slide, if you ran a ladder from that loss to Port Adelaide to now – and that includes winning the finals and the grand final drubbing – the Swans would be sitting fourth-bottom with a percentage of 86.8. That is the same number of wins as Essendon from more games – because they played finals and Essendon didn’t, or don’t depending on your age. And they have about the same percentage as the Bombers over that period.
Sydney can no longer halt momentum once sides get on a roll.
A stat to reinforce the meekness that has infected the Swans this year is that twice in a row now they have given up 10-goal runs from an opposition. That didn’t happen at all between from 2010 to 2024.
The Swans have been living their frustrations, giving away 21 50-metre penalties this year – the most in the league. Put another way, last year they gave away 17 in all 23 home and away games. We are only just half-way through the season.
Crows players surround Wayne Milera after he kicked a goal in his team’s 90-point thumping of Sydney.Credit: via Getty Images
They have dropped away everywhere statistically, so numbers are only helpful up to a point, but their attack and forward efficiency has been dreadful.
OK, Papley – and to a far lesser extent Logan McDonald – account for a bit of that, but it doesn’t account for everything, for they were the league’s heaviest scoring team last year.
Their stoppage game has fallen away almost as badly as the turnover game.
In both of their past two games, they have given up precisely 131 points, from 64 and 70 inside-50s respectively. Those two games sit among the worst defensive performances since 1999.
Nick Blakey’s numbers are almost identical to last year, but in a team that is struggling, his output feels poorer than it is. Saturday night was his worst game for more than a year. He had just 11 touches and no marks … playing in defence for a team that gave up 70 inside-50s. It’s fair to say he and his fellow backs had a fair look at the ball.
This is all Dean Cox’s problem, but not his fault.
Though revealingly, or at least candidly, he admitted in his post-match press conference that maybe they hadn’t been done enough at training, and suggested they would be getting to work after their latest lamentable showing.
This column called for the Swans to be unsparing in their forensic review of last year’s grand final disaster.
Swans coach Dean Cox implores his players to lift against Adelaide.Credit: via Getty Images
If they were, they did not heed all the lessons. Cox warned the post-mortem to this match would be ruthless. It needs to be.
The 90-point loss was the fifth-biggest defeat at the SCG in the club’s history.
This on a night they were supposed to be celebrating their famed “Bloods culture” and drought-breaking 2005 premiership. It was enough to drain the blood from their faces.
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