Sometimes in footy – hell, most of the time – the result clouds all else.
That, I suspect, is going to be the fallout from Sydney’s dramatic win over Collingwood on Friday night: the Swans, 25 points down with 11 minutes to go before embarking on a comeback for the ages to cling to top spot for at least another week, and confirm they still have more punches left to throw in a 2024 season that seemed to have slipped away from them.
The Magpies? A damning last-quarter capitulation to undo all the brilliant work they’d done across the first three and a half quarters, with a side almost unrecognisable from the mob which took all before them in 2023 en route to the premiership; when you lose in that fashion, especially with a season and a flag defence on the line, cutting of slack is a rare commodity to be found.
But you know what? Footy is rarely that simple.
Sydney won this game because, at the time of greatest need, Isaac Heeney, almost on a whim, woke up and decided to be the irresistible force that was the heavy Brownlow favourite midway through the season.
It’s worth fast-forwarding this match on Kayo to the moment Will Hayward kicks the first of the Swans’ five-goal final term burst and just watching Heeney: his influence on the result was almost total.
Sydney won this game because, having been utterly outplayed by Steele Sidebottom throughout proceedings at the SCG, in the midst of perhaps his quietest game since his debut year, Errol Gulden showed his unmatched class to snap through a difficult winning goal that he made look absurdly easy.
Even that, though, had Heeney’s hands all over it: as the ball is thrown up, he and Gulden are standing side by side with their opponents, Isaac Quaynor and Sidebottom: when Heeney breaks to the inside, Sidebottom breaks off from Gulden, who he has stuck to like glue all night, and goes after the danger man, because he must.
Quaynor, though, isn’t on the same wavelength: he takes two steps after Heeney before realising that a) Sidebottom has him covered, and b) Brodie Grundy’s tap is going to the other side.
He’s doomed: with two moves and one miscommunication, Gulden has found the metre and a half of space he needs to gather a perfect Grundy tap and snap through the winning goal.
It wasn’t only Heeney, though: Sydney won this game because Chad Warner got more breathtaking the longer the match went on, bursting back into the form that had him briefly labelled mid-year as a Chris Judd clone and helped by the fact the Pies had no one who could match him for both pace and strength.
He’d have 14 disposals for the term plus a goal; Heeney’s stats were the same. You couldn’t ask for more for two players who, after recent struggles, just locked up their spots in the All-Australian team.
Sydney won it because Nick Blakey finally started hitting targets again, because Logan McDonald held his nerve in front of goal this time, because Luke Parker, shifted into the midfield in a last-quarter throw of the dice by John Longmire, showed in his pure desperation for the footy that he’s got a shot or two left to fire as an AFL player yet.
In short, Sydney won it because of their incredible talent – and facing a team featuring names like Ned Long and Jack Bytel needed to play key roles, it was enough to pip them at the death when they finally decided to turn it on.
Swans fans and players deserve to celebrate it; after the dryest run any ladder-leader has surely ever had, the pure relief a result like this brings makes their actual performance all but irrelevant. If Sydney can remember that this is what they can bring to the table, then there’s every chance they can work things out before finals, having earned themselves the barest bit of breathing space.
But take a look at the big picture for a second. It wasn’t a 112-point loss, but this was not the display of a top team, nor even a leading premiership contender. The Swans were, from about the 10-minute mark of the first quarter to the 17-minute mark of the last, genuinely woeful.
With the ball, they were butchers, whether missing target after target going inside 50 by wildly blazing and just plain shanking their kicks or collapsing into turnover trying to rebound in a way that allowed the Pies to have 12 scoring shots by three quarter time from possession chains that began inside their own attacking 50.
As for the latter stat, had the Pies kicked more accurately than the 2.10 they mustered from those dozen attempts, this match would have been long gone before they Collingwooded Collingwood.
The Swans’ third quarter was very nearly as unedifying as any of the four they dished up against Port Adelaide, with the key, damning stat being seven: the amount of marks inside 50 they allowed the Pies to take, four of them in barely six minutes to start the term.
Collingwood. The team who sit 12th for that stat in the competition; who were missing their spearhead in Brody Mihocek and another important key figure in Nathan Kreuger. Whose plan in the first half was essentially to try and bring the ball to ground wherever possible and bring Bobby Hill, Lachie Schultz and co. into the game.
The first was a touch lucky: a Steele Sidebottom shank from the centre square lobs to about 49 metres from goal and Jamie Elliott reads it better than Dane Rampe.
But what happened next was unforgiveable: Elliott’s set shot goes right to the line, and Logan McDonald, stationed in defence from the first bounce to try and cover for the injured Lewis Melican, shows none of the backman instincts he’ll need to survive in that role by punching the ball straight back into play, leading to a Patrick Lipinski snapped goal.
The second mark inside 50 was a complete breakdown in pressure, with James Jordon at the centre.
Quaynor gathers 60 metres out from goal, shrugs a Rampe tackle, and a path to the edge of 50 opens up when Jordon decides to make a beeline for Nick Daicos, sitting on the outer, rather than doing anything to impede the bloke with the footy.
Ahead of the ball, Blakey has been sucked up looking to get involved in what, moments earlier, had been a Swans rebound; as Quaynor kicks under no pressure, with a score of star Swans, most obviously Heeney and Callum Mills, he passes to a four on four, where Daniel McStay marks over the top of Tom McCartin.
The third? Calamitous. Picking up the footy inside defensive 50 after a hacked Sidebottom kick forward from the centre bounce, Braeden Campbell’s handball back, ostensibly to Rampe, is one of the worst you’ll ever see.
It goes behind him, it’s along the ground, it’s pretty much straight to the charging McStay, who gives to the nearby Beau McCreery; from there, it’s a simple chip kick inboard to Schultz, who marks 30 out and directly in front.
Almost as much to blame as Campbell was Matt Roberts: the youngster deserts his man, Schultz, and starts running back towards the goal line anticipating McCreery would go for goal.
The issue is that McDonald is already set up to be just that, and has been back in the hot spot for a good four seconds before McCreery’s kick leaves his boot. Roberts, having committed desperately to his first endeavour, now realises he has to wheel back pronto, and can’t make it in time to spoil Schultz.
This is the sort of defensive breakdown good structures don’t allow: in those, everyone knows their role, and can ascertain exactly where they need to be in any circumstance.
These sort of things were common midway through 2023, when the Swans struggled mightily without Paddy and Tom McCartin, both out with long-term concussions that ended the former’s career.
Roberts is young, and playing regularly as a loose man behind the ball; he’ll learn, but learn he must. And it’s a bad time in the season for structural blunders to be happening as often as they are with the Swans.
I’m going to put another young fella under the bus in criticising the fourth mark conceded inside 50; from a long ball inside 50, Darcy Cameron comprehensively outmarks McDonald, goes back, and puts through another Magpies goal.
This isn’t a structure issue as much as it is a personnel one: it makes twice in the quarter McDonald has made errors which rip the soul out of a team fighting tooth and nail to stop the opposition scoring.
McDonald’s problem is he chooses early to engage with Cameron, a man of greater height, reach, bulk and experience: it would be easy to say he just had to find a way to spoil that ball, especially given Cameron needed two bites to mark it, but the truth is he gave himself little chance even while the ball is in mid-air.
Even more concerningly, though, McDonald had no help at all in the air: six Swans are near to the fall of the ball, and yet only Rampe even attempts to get there to spoil. Hayden McLean, McCartin and Roberts are far too far away, and have judged the fall of the ball far too late, to do anything but watch on as Cameron marks.
McDonald has played two games as a key defender, having been a forward virtually all his life up until now. You’re asking for trouble if you leave him on an island, as the Swans did as a collective here.
Within five minutes, the Pies have more than doubled their marks inside 50 numbers, had four clear-cut shots at goal, and nailed three of them. Their lead is past 20 points, and the Swans are in a position they’d remain until Gulden put them in front in the dying minutes: on the ropes.
History will say that the Swans found their best – or rather, Heeney and Warner found their best – when it mattered; that their ability to blow teams apart in quick time, such a cornerstone of their early-season winning streak, is proof that they’re still a force to be reckoned with.
But if their backline can be so brutally exposed by Collingwood of all teams, how are they going to go against Jamarra Ugle-Hagan, Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy? Or Joe Daniher and Eric Hipwood with Charlie Cameron nipping around at ground level? Or Mitch Georgiades, Charlie Dixon and Esava Ratugolea… again?
If their ball use is going to be this sloppy, and their backline this exposed on turnover, how will they cope against Hawthorn’s manic team running, or Hayden Young’s laserlike kicking inside Freo’s 50? How will they stop Tom Stewart doing as he pleases behind the ball?
The Swans are on top of the ladder. Their losing streak is over. Their premiership campaign is, somehow, back on something resembling a track.
But if you think this means they’re back in business – or if you think the Swans would THEMSELVES think they’re back in business – then you’ve missed the many, many, worrying signs that prove the exact opposite.
One win doesn’t salvage things. Fifteen epic minutes don’t wash away three and a half quarters, and two weeks prior to them, of calamity upon calamity.
Sydney have broken out of jail. They’ll be on top at round’s end.
But they’ve still got a loooooong way to go before they can reclaim the title of best team in it.
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