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Has Dean Cox Inherited A Damaged Team?

Those blowhards in the AFL media, them overpaid talking heads with exaggerated reputations, will be coming for the Sydney Swans, now that they have plummeted down the ladder. Back to back 10 to 15 goal thrashings will do that. It will be ‘so-called’ incisive judgements about the lack of talent on the Sydney list and how they will have to go into rebuild mode. These ‘geniuses’ all jump on the judgemental ‘must rebuild’ media led bandwagons, which saw clubs like Melbourne and North Melbourne stuck down the bottom of the ladder for decades. Here is a Sydney Swans playing list evaluation in 2025.Continue Reading

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Football - AFL Multicultural Round Commemorative Ball, Lin Jong, 8 Aug 2015

Gerard Healy calls for the tag and it has become a running joke. Tag every player, maybe? Could it be because nobody plays on anyone anymore in AFL? The demand for tagging is really a deeper cry for greater accountability? A bit more mano on mano? Funnily enough, ball use efficiency decreases when the tag is applied. AFL mutterings in the manosphere. No kidding, it’s not rocket science but the coaching stratagems are so far up you know where with zoning pinched from basketball that the penny aint dropped. Footy has become the unaccountable game. When I played the game we all played on someone.Continue Reading

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white swan

Or has he made a mess of his first few months of the season, as head coach of the Swans in 2025? Tom McCartin? A failed experiment still costing the team stability and continuity. The Sydney Swans AFL  side is sliding down to the lower reaches of a long ladder. 14th place. Has Dean Cox inherited a damaged team? Did John Longmire exit a traumatised football team? Injuries to important senior players have made things worse to be sure. However if a solid system was in place, then, the thinking goes that new soldiers come in and play the roles required. This is not happening in terms of four quarter performances producing winning results.Continue Reading

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Football Record - AFL Women's (AFLW) Competition, Feb-Apr 2020

The truth about AFL football these days is that nobody plays on each other. If you look around the ground during a game, you will see 36 players standing off from one another. Sure, the full forward and full back may be nearer to each other than most, but nobody is wearing the other, like in the old days. The modern footy game is a high possession, low contest affair that sees the ball move quickly up and down the ground. This higher scoring style of play is by design. Rule changes by those in charge of the AFL have reduced the defensive nature of the game.Continue Reading

Football - Sherrin, circa 2001

They say that opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one. The question is whether there are some expert arseholes out there in media land. The AFL media landscape is largely populated by loud mouthed ex-footballers. These chaps have currency in the minds of the listening audience. Fans of the game want product associated with the game seven days a week it seems. These paid producers of content in the form of spurious leaked information and speculative opinion keep the home fires burning. They soon learn that the more controversial the material the more mileage they get out of it. Kane Cornes, David King and co. Therefore, much of what we hear in the footy meta sphere is pumped full of hot air. Coaches and the media: AFL sacrificial slaughter feeds the fans.Continue Reading