How teams can stop Sydney Matthew Lloyd
The Age
July 28, 2013 If only putting a winning football team together was this easy - you walk into a pharmacy, hand your script to the chemist and you get all the ingredients that make up the Sydney Swans.
It would be a heady dose all right, a concoction of skill, courage, discipline, character, sacrifice and mateship - everything you could ever want in a football side. Coaches of sporting clubs, including some AFL coaches, would travel far and wide to get their hands on a potion like that but the great thing about sport is that a team's fabric and culture can't be bought over the counter or manufactured.
Good and bad culture within a club can come and go over time but, along with Geelong, the Swans continue to set the standard for the competition and are again the team to beat.
Since round 10 last year, the Swans' record is 29 wins, six losses and one draw.
Only Hawthorn has a superior record, yet it was the Swans who won the arm wrestle when it mattered most on grand final day last year. It does take an arm wrestle to beat the Swans because they rarely have an off day.
Over the past 18 months, only Hawthorn, Geelong, Collingwood and Port Adelaide have beaten the Swans. Their wins come so regularly because they grind their competition down through all the qualities that they stand for in the Bloods culture.
The Swans are so good at playing the game on their terms and have a game style that is built for winning tough finals football. It consists of winning the contested ball, kicking long, dominating the opposition at stoppages as well as suffocating it with constant pressure when they have possession of the ball. Their midfield depth is second to none and they don't rely on any one individual to win them a game off their own boot, which makes them really hard to plan for.
The Tigers have come so far this season and on Sunday they get the opportunity to take another big scalp after their win against Fremantle last Sunday. Sydney is so good at exposing the deficiencies of the opposition and because of their own evenness as a playing group, the Swans players continue to get under the opposition's guard. But that doesn't mean they cannot be taken down.
Here is my must-do list for Richmond - or any other side for that matter - for success against Sydney. It should be these areas that opposition clubs look at between now and the end of the home-and-away season.
1. Like Port Adelaide did, you must beat or at least match Sydney in two key areas in which the Swans pride themselves on being the best. You must beat them at the contested ball and have an appetite to tackle and harass them at a greater intensity than they are throwing back.
2. Play two ruckmen to cope with the amount of stoppages that eventuate when playing Sydney. The Swans are ranked No.1 for goals kicked from forward-50 stoppages and also rank No.1 at the other end for the least points conceded in their defensive-50 stoppages. They always win the arm wrestle especially if one ruckmen has to contend with both Mike Pyke and Shane Mumford and now Kurt Tippett, who can take the ruck contests in the forward line.
3. Do not allow Jarrad McVeigh and Nick Malceski to play the game on their terms off half-back. The opposition forwards must hold their positions in the forward 50 and the midfielders need to hit up both players' men.
Both McVeigh and Malceski can be vulnerable on the last line of defence, which not enough teams have looked to exploit. Both also win most of their possession in space and uncontested so they need to be harassed and hit hard whenever the opportunity presents.
4. Continue to sit on Daniel Hannebery as he is the Swans' most damaging midfielder. Kane Cornes kept him to four possessions to half-time and it went a long way to winning Port Adelaide the game.
5. The Swans have the best midfield depth in the AFL so you will never stop them winning their share of the football, but the goals kicked by Adam Goodes, Hannebery, Josh Kennedy, Luke Parker and Kieren Jack is what often gets them over the line. Limit this with strong two-way running and this will put enormous pressure on Tippett to be the man to kick the Swans a winning score.
6. Make Sydney the hunted and thrive on the challenge of taking it down in home-and-away games by playing with finals-like intensity. If the Tigers can match the Swans on the inside at the SCG, they may trouble them with their outside run, which was how Port Adelaide exposed Sydney earlier in the year and Richmond did last year at the MCG.
Make no mistake, Sydney is the team to beat at the business end of the year.
It's not in the Swans' nature to give in under pressure. It's going to take a special team to stand up to the pressure and take their title in September.
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/how-teams-can-stop-sydney-20130727-2qrkm.html#ixzz2aGcU5yLk
