It would be silly to do any analysis of Sydney’s season, nor their eight-point loss to Essendon, without noting the injuries that have cruelled last year’s runners-up at every turn.
Seven of last year’s grand final 23, plus Luke Parker, were sidelined on Saturday afternoon at Marvel Stadium, including two of their best five in Errol Gulden and Tom Papley, their preferred key forward pairing of Joel Amartey and Logan McDonald, and the criminally underrated Robbie Fox and Harry Cunningham in defence.
Any team, even one good enough to be 2024’s minor premiers, would struggle to cope with a casualty ward that big.
But it’s one thing to be down, and quite another to leak six goals in a quarter to a Bombers outfit which ranks in the bottom four for scores this year.
It’s one thing to struggle to replace stars, and quite another to be so routinely sliced open with damaging runs from half-back by a team not renowned for either.
It’s one thing to have a decimated forward line, and quite another to be so incapable of finding a Plan B as to have 61 inside 50s against a vulnerable Essendon defence for seven goals, and give up in the first quarter the most amount of intercept marks a team have mustered in a term this season.
Injuries or not, and notwithstanding a gallant fightback that saw the Swans steamroll home in the final quarter only to be denied by their own inaccuracy, there’s something fundamentally broken about the way they are doing things.
Sorting it out, either by fixing what’s flawed or by trying a different tack, is the defining early challenge of Dean Cox’s time at the helm.
The Swans made their push for a premiership last year on the back of devastating run from half-back, beautiful foot skills and a vast array of goalkicking options, both up forward and through the midfield.
But what flew under the radar was how good they were at holding the ball in there, denying opponents a quick rebound and a chance to hurt them going the other way. The Swans were number one in the AFL in 2024 for their opponents’ rebound 50 rate, while only Hawthorn conceded fewer points from defensive half.
This year? They’re bottom six in the rebound 50 rate, with the likes of Richmond, West Coast and a Melbourne team with virtually no forwards among those faring worse; while they’re now merely eighth-best at conceding points from defensive half.
Part of this strength in 2024 was the defensive pressure of the likes of Papley, and part of it was a fearsome ability to score themselves whenever in attacking positions – the Swans ranked second for goals per inside 50 and for scoring shots per inside 50, at 26.2 and 47.8 per cent respectively.
Essentially, they scored once every two inside 50s – an excellent strike rate even before you take into account that only Richmond and Gold Coast fared worse for average marks per inside 50.
But that was fine, because the Swans’ major strength was fast ball movement from attacking midfielders capable of hitting the scoreboard, A.K.A. Chad Warner, Isaac Heeney and Gulden.
This wasn’t a side that needed big marking forwards to do the bulk of the scoring – of the six Swans to kick 30 goals or more last year, Amartey and McDonald are the only conventional talls.
The problems, really, come at ground level, where the Swans still have the bulk of their best available squad – though admittedly Papley has proved irreplaceable.
Even without him, though, a drop from being last year’s best team at scoring from forward half, averaging 47.4 points per match, to being fifth-worst this year with 36, is dismal.
Neither Heeney nor Warner have hit the heights of last season, which has become a major problem.
From a pure goals sense, they’re averaging about a goal per game apiece – outstanding for normal midfielders, but down from 1.42 and 1.4 per game last year respectively.
But their total scoreboard impact is well down: from sitting third and equal fifth respectively for average score involvements per game last year, they now sit 58th and equal 12th. Heeney in particular has had a staggering fall back into the grounds of mere mortals.
Warner’s key drop, though, is in the quality of his entries: his slump for score involvements comes despite averaging 1.5 more inside 50s per game. The Swans are getting more looks from him, but less reward.
Those slumps make the loss of Gulden, the best of the trio at delivering inside 50, even more profound: but Heeney and Warner in last year’s form would have gone further to mitigating his absence.
The Swans are, slightly, ahead on average inside 50s compared to 2024; yet while last year, they were far and away the competition’s highest-scoring team, this year they’re down alongside North Melbourne and Fremantle in the bottom eight.
Chad Warner and Will Hayward argue. (Photo by James Wiltshire/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
All of this is to say: the Swans’ forwards are getting as much of a look in as last year, yet through both the absence of Amartey and McDonald and an inability to find another way home, they’re 17 points per game worse off.
Notably as well, they were the best team in the business at conceding scores from the opposition’s defensive 50; now, it’s tenth-best.
And yet, this year they are behind only Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs for the amount of times teams can get it from defensive 50 to forward 50 against them, with a rate of 19.9 per cent: that’s actually better than last year, when they were second-best in the competition (the Bulldogs better again), with a rate of 20.3 per cent.
As for the scores they’re conceding, they’re seven points a game on average worse than last year, despite actually giving up fewer marks inside 50. Again, it’s not an aerial issue, which means McCartin’s regular absences and even not having the likes of Lewis Melican down there against the Bombers wasn’t the primary problem.
It’s the same as the forward line issue, essentially: the Swans are very similar in volume to how they played last year, but significantly worse in output.
Up until Saturday, I was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt that, primarily, it was the personnel in attack causing the drop-off, and the frequent absences of Tom McCartin to shore up the defence – but for all Francis, Hamling and (an infinitely better option) Hayden McLean’s limitations, they were far from the ones responsible for Sydney’s profligacy against the Bombers; while McCartin was indeed down back, for all the good it did.
Time and time again, the Swans bombed aimlessly, missed leading targets, or did both, with Zach Reid and Ben McKay feasting aerially. By quarter time, the Dons had 11 intercept marks, with six of them hauled down by that duo.
Then, when the Bombers had their chances, they swarmed – a first-half forward 50 pressure factor of 264 (good grief!) saw the Swans cough the ball up repeatedly, give up looks at goal, and get punished with accurate kicking.
Factor into that the ill discipline that saw Sydney give up all three Essendon goals via 50m penalties, two of them for encroaching on the mark, and I’m astonished Dean Cox had any hair left at quarter time.
The problems are bigger than just going forward, though: the Swans, up until three quarter time when the match was all but shot, fared dismally in the pressure stakes – their pressure factor of 152 up to quarter time was their worst in a single term all year.
The most damning goal conceded by the lack of pressure on the ball-carrier was definitely this one – the Bombers practically plead to have a handball turned over, or a tackle laid, for the Swans to go the other way, but no Sydney player even lays a hand on a red and black jumper, and it ends with Archie Perkins shooting from 40 metres under no duress whatsoever.
The Swans of last year were never a hugely high-disposal team, but they were in control enough in most games to stay ahead of the count: notably, they went 11-3 at winning the disposal tally up until Round 15 last year, when they were 13-1 and miles ahead of everyone else in the competition.
They went 5-7 from there, including -80 in the grand final, and are now 4-5 to start 2025, with the Bombers’ sheer domination of the disposal count merely the most glaring of a growing trend.
The Bombers finished with 96 more disposals, but it was +98 at three quarter time.
No, it didn’t translate to territory domination – mostly, it was just the Bombers chipping the ball around their defensive half, refusing to give the ball away without a fight. They racked up the marks, controlled the ball, and finished with just 45 inside 50s to 61 – though it was 18-35 after half time, when the Swans were a mile down and chasing a game the Dons just seemed happy to try and kill as boringly as possible.
There’s a desperation factor to all of this: 10 Swans didn’t lay a tackle in the first half, and to be down in that count 32-19 at half time given how much ball the Bombers had is damning.
This is where Sydney find themselves: a shell of the team that reached the grand final last year, never mind the utter force of nature they were at this time 12 months ago.
Defensively, they invite pressure, while failing to put on enough themselves; they’re chaotic and best and impotent at worst when going inside 50 to a forward group that needs all the help it can get; the stars remaining on the park are all down.
Essendon are not a team that should have been able to test any of these weaknesses; that they did, and so spectacularly with that six-goal final quarter, is the surest sign yet that something has to give.
And yet you couldn’t look at the way they played in the final quarter, when, with hope just about lost, they marched home with three goals to have only their own inaccuracy cost them victory, and think for a moment that this team is cooked.
The run and carry down the middle was back with a vengeance, scrambling the Bombers and leaving their backline ill set up to intercept. The marks inside 50 still didn’t come, but at ground level, there were threats everywhere.
Will Hayward at last came into his own; Angus Sheldrick showed more than enough to suggest he’s a best-22 footballer and not a sub; Justin McInerney was electric, Nick Blakey utterly unstoppable until being forced off by a HIA from Zach Merrett’s errant arm.
The Swans’ very best remains lethal, no matter what personnel they have available. It’s good enough to come within a few moments – Blakey being off, a dodgy dangerous tackle free paid against Hamling, any number of gettable misses in a second half they dominated – of winning a game they trailed by 39 at half time.
The cavalry will all return, and the Swans will undoubtedly be better for it when they do.
But the season might already be shot by then; lest he wants to face the ignominy of letting a grand final winning team miss the eight in his first season in charge, Cox must find a way to hold the fort for now.
Because playing the same way they did last year for lesser results just isn’t going to cut it with the tools he’s got.
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