By Vince Rugari
There’s never a good time to find yourself in “crisis mode” as a football club. But early-to-mid August, approaching the business end of the season, when you should be starting to peak?
These are bad, bad areas for the Sydney Swans, who have spent the entire year to date inside the top four, and have been in first place since the end of round eight, but now find themselves trapped in a dangerous downward spiral with their players widely accused of putting themselves ahead of the team.
Chad Warner and the Sydney Swans are out of sorts.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Win in the right way on Friday night at the SCG against a suddenly resurgent Collingwood and most, if not all, will be forgiven. Lose, and the heat will turn up even further – they could even be dislodged from top spot by the end of the weekend. Let’s dive into the big questions surrounding this important clash.
Are the Swans ‘mentally refreshed’ now?
This is, surely, the biggest question of them all – so big that, if answered in the affirmative, it could probably also answer all the below questions. It’s still hard to fathom how bad Sydney were against Port Adelaide, falling by 112 points in the club’s worst defeat in 31 years and the worst of John Longmire’s coaching career.
It was, as Paul Roos put it in these pages this week, a most ‘un-Swans like’ performance, and one which suggests something isn’t quite right within the playing group. So befuddled was Longmire by their embarrassing capitulation at Adelaide Oval, and their lack of competitive edge, that he gave his players two days off to clear their heads.
Surely there’s no chance they turn up like that again on Friday night after a week of huge week of internal and external pressure. Speaking of which...
Do they know the first bounce is at 7.40pm?
Serious question. And this has been a problem all year long, not just as their results have tanked during the past six weeks. Sydney have won just eight of 20 first quarters this season. Against Port, they didn’t score until 17 minutes into the second quarter, and didn’t kick a major until six minutes after that.
Longmire said this week they had tried different things to address the issue but declared that the time has come for them to actually “do something about it”. A true statement of intent would involve them bursting out of the blocks on Friday night and putting Collingwood on the back foot from the first bounce. Nothing more, nothing less.
John Longmire suffered the worst loss of his coaching career at the weekend.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Will the return of Rampe plug the gaping holes in defence?
The ease with which Port Adelaide’s forwards were able to negotiate their way through the spaces that would ordinarily be occupied by Sydney’s backline was mind-blowing.
It can’t all be pinned on the absence of personnel, but that was certainly a factor: without Dane Rampe and Lewis Melican, their two most reliable key defenders this year, their structures were basically non-existent.
Melican is still recovering from a tight hamstring, but Rampe’s return is significant. The defender is a renowned director of traffic and organiser who tends to bring the best out of the players around him.
What’s eating Joel Amartey?
The young forward is in danger of being classed as a one-hit wonder. His spectacular nine-goal haul against Adelaide remains the best return from any player in the AFL this season, but he hasn’t done much since – only once in his six subsequent matches has he kicked multiple goals, and in three of those, he was held goalless.
Amartey was “soft dropped” from the Swans team that faced Port: he was named in their 23 but was a late change on Saturday night. The club said he was being “managed” – a move some teams pull when they want to drop a player for form reasons but want to protect them publicly.
We’re not saying that is what’s happened here, but we are saying that, having been named this week, Amartey needs to do more. He’s not alone: fellow tall Logan McDonald has also struggled to make an impact while small forward Sam Wicks has kicked only two goals in total over his last seven games.
Is Callum Mills at peak fitness yet?
Sydney’s skipper has played three games since his return from the shoulder and calf problems which delayed the start to his season, and he hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. That’s partly down to environmental factors – namely that he has come into a team in bad form, at a time when injuries to other players have forced positional reshuffles – but not entirely.
Mills has had 12, 12 and 14 disposals in his three games against North Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs and Port Adelaide. Only twice in all of 2023 did he finish a game with fewer than 14, and in one of them, he hurt his calf within the first five minutes. He’s also yet to settle into a defined position, spending time across midfield, half-forward and half-back. He will play against Collingwood on the wing.
The Swans said he was assigned a “mini pre-season” program to get himself ready for the top grade, but he doesn’t look it. How much of that is on him, and how much is on the club? It’s impossible to say from here, but Sydney desperately need some on-field leadership right now – and that’s literally his job.
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