Good evening all, it’s Sunday night, time for our very first Sunday SwansCast review show! It’s a full-on episode tonight, as we review the intriguing Swans win on Friday night, that had as many positives as negatives, while we look at the handful of players and where their future lies.
Report – Ratings – POTY – Talking points - Longmire
I think it's worthwhile taking a deep breath and looking at the match in context of the season, rather than in isolation. Everything looks good and bad in isolation, since you can break an entire match down into individual moments.
It's fair to say, that there's not much from the match that will make Swans' DVD of season highlights in October, but several players excelled and showed us what they can really do. Isaac Heeney and Luke Parker dominated the midfield, while Callum Sinclair had the better of his intriguing ruck battle with Matthew Kruezer.
The best thing to come from the game, apart from no injuries and the four points, was the second half performance by Oliver Florent. We were critical of his selection in the senior team last season, and even early this year, since it really looked like he lacked something.
Last year, it was clearly physical, looking like a boy among men. Early this year, I spoke about it with Heather Quinlan on our weekly podcast, and we agreed that it was confidence and mental application more than anything else.
He's broken through that barrier and he's playing with freedom and confidence, alongside Will Hayward, and they're forming a very good partnership. While Isaac Heeney won the Goodes-O'Loughlin Marn Grook medal, Callum Sinclair, Luke Parker and Oliver Florent were pretty good alternative choices, and no one would have argued against any of them winning it.
It's hard to look at the season and say that it's been an exciting 11 weeks of football. Apart from a handful of matches, it's been boring, dreary, and occasionally dreadful (thanks Brisbane, Essendon and Carlton). Some of the anticipated contenders have fallen a long way behind, while unheralded teams have made the jump.
North Melbourne have turned 180 degrees and have ditched their 2017 bottom four form and are right on the edge of top four. Port Adelaide are deadset drifting with the tide, while Adelaide are struggling to field a team at the moment.
Greater Western Sydney endured a dreadful month of football, but turned it on against Adelaide this evening. Sydney haven't exactly enjoyed a fantastic first 11 weeks of football, hardly turning in four quarter performances. They did play in arguably the match of the season though, their win against the Western Bulldogs.
We spend a bit of time talking about the futures of Nic Newman and Gary Rohan, both recalled for the Carlton match, as well as Aliir Aliir and youngster Ryley Stoddart. Both have come in for criticism from multiple sources of late, some warranted, some not so.
Nic Newman is an interesting player to discuss. Age is not on his side, having turned 25 at the start of the year, with just 22 games under his belt. Can he maintain his side ahead of Ryley Stoddart and Matthew Ling, who both look like future guns? Time will tell, but he didn't look like a man who was playing as though his career was on the line on Friday night. It must be with his contract running up this year.
Big thanks to Joshua Maher for joining us this week, for his first ever Swans Cast episode. We'll interview him another time, so that you can learn more about his history following the Swans and his background, it certainly is an interesting one.
Enjoy the week and the episode! As always, hit us up on social media using the tag @theswansblog, or the hash tag #SwansCast and #SwansCastExtra.
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