Sydney coach John Longmire would have to pull off his “best Houdini act” to rescue his team from its alarming slump as several experts refuse to blame the club’s injury crisis for its shock decline.
The Swans are now languishing in 14th spot on the AFL ladder after dropping six of their past seven games. The run has included losses to Melbourne (50 points), Geelong (93), Collingwood (29) and, most recently, Fremantle (17), as well as last-gasp defeats to Port Adelaide (2) and the Giants (1).
Compounding the Swans’ issues are medium and long-term injuries to Callum Mills (calf), Logan McDonald (ankle), Dane Rampe (neck), Joel Amartey (hamstring), Sam Reid (hamstring) and Paddy McCartin.
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“They’re missing key parts in defence, they’re horrid in attack, they have a ruck deficiency and they are unreliable around the ball in a manner that you don‘t expect the Swans to be,” Fox Footy broadcaster Gerard Whateley said on AFL 360. “And that’s just for starters.”
In the past four weeks, the Swans have conceded an average of 104 points – ranked 16th in the competition – while overall they’re 17th for points from stoppages.
Co-host Mark Robinson said the Swans had “trouble everywhere”, but added he was particularly concerned about the on-ball brigade’s output.
Mills injured in Swans’ 4th straight L | 01:28
“I was looking at the midfield and they had control at times (against Fremantle). But generally, they couldn’t find the ball … It was quite pathetic, it really was,” Robinson told AFL 360.
“If you go through their midfield – Warner, Parker, Mills got hurt really early on the weekend, Rowbottom is a really good player, Gulden is flying at the moment – what is going on in the middle? We’ve seen Hickey pick up that team and carry it over the line – and Sean Darcy treated him like a 12-year-old boy on the weekend.
“The midfield, they were horrible on the weekend. And then you throw in they’ve got defensive problems, they’ve got offensive problems … everywhere you look there‘s more than spotfires. There’s little raging bushfires.
“They‘ve got some talent there, they’ve got to get some players back. But they’ve just got to find some resolve that we typically expect to see from Sydney week-in, week-out.”
Robinson pointed out Longmire had rescued the Swans from slow starts in previous seasons, most notably in 2017 when they recovered from a 0-6 start to make the finals after winning 14 of 16 games, as well as in 2021 won seven of their final eight home and away games to surge into a surprise elimination final berth.
Whateley responded: “He’s rescued them a couple of times … This would be his best Houdini act.”
It comes as questions remain about the possible lingering impact of Sydney’s horror Grand Final performance against Geelong last year, going down by 81 points in a humiliating loss.
No AFL team since 2000 has lost a Grand Final by 40 points or more then won at least one final the next year. Melbourne (2000), Collingwood (2003), Brisbane (2004), Port Adelaide (2007) and Adelaide (2017) missed the finals altogether the next year, while the Swans (2014) made the top four in 2015 but were bundled out in straight-sets.
“The journey of the runner-up is a hard one in recent times,” Whateley said. “You can pick Adelaide’s deterioration to beyond their Grand Final – the numbers weren‘t as heavy, but the toll of it was – Port Adelaide … I guess that’s the intangible, isn’t it?
“They don‘t believe at the moment and part of that, I think, is when you are missing both McCartin’s and Rampe down back, I think that has filtered through.”
But dual premiership Kangaroo David King believes the Swans’ issues are deeper than lack of personnel.
“It’s a hard one to work out what’s gone wrong with Sydney. The easy, fingernail-deep (analysis), to use a Ross-ism, is to say ‘no Rampe, no McCartins – that brings a trauma’. But they‘re getting hurt more by their lack of midfield influence where they cannot win clearance and they cannot win contest,” King told SEN on Monday.
Sydney Swans Press Conference | 07:55
“What happens then is you go into an undersized backline or less talented match-ups and you leak more (points) than you normally do.
“Good midfielders make good decisions, they break into better space, they go the handball when they should, they kick when they should and they play with power and precision. I’m looking at their mids and they are so erratic … They‘re good is very good, but then the next game they can hardly touch the ball and hardly impact with the footy.
“John Longmire has got a problem as to which ones to endorse week to week because you just don‘t know what they’re going to bring. Now does a Grand Final do that to you, a loss like that? Potentially.
“I don’t have the answer … and I think John Longmire is scratching his head at the moment.
“(But) that‘s the problem. They’re bringing such an inconsistent application and output that you can’t bank on them.”
Triple Coleman Medallist Matthew Lloyd shared a similar sentiment
“They’re down on confidence. They are a bunch of kids that I thought couldn’t get to this point because of the seasons they had last year and I thought they could only improve,” Lloyd told AFL Media’s Access All Areas.
“Their backline is a mess, but I’ve seen other teams cover situations like this better than they have.”