It was a strong Sydney Swans side that ventured to Greenway oval to take on the Hawks on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
With the likes of Jared Crouch, Nic Fosdike, Nick Davis, Heath Grundy, Tim Schmidt & Luke Brennan, the Hawks were going to be hard pressed making an impression on the inform Swans.
Well the Hawks did make an impression and their intensity and clean disposal had the Swans on the back foot and trailing by 3 goals at quarter time in what was probably some of the best footy Tuggies have played all year. DJ’s tagging role on Davis was creating headaches for Davis with Johnson rebounding and creating scoring opportunities for the Hawks.
Unfortunately, the Hawks intensity dropped early in the second qtr and all their hard work was ‘fluttered away’ in a 10 minute burst from the Swans. Jimmy Rice got the Hawks up and running late in the 2nd with some craft stoppage work to trail by just 4 pts.
The third qtr saw Sydney’s ball winners like O’Dwyer and Davis who had been moved into the midfield help the Swans gain the ascendancy and take a 25 pt advantage at 3 qtr time.
With a reasonable tail wind the Hawks had a sniff of victory but failed to hit up targets and continually gave goal kicking options by silly errors in midfield which maximized the pressure on the Hawks defenders. Sydney consolidated its lead and virtually snuffed out any sign of a Tuggeranong charge to victory but the Hawks did show fighting spirit all day which was reflected with 2 late goals to bring the margin to 30 before the siren sounded.
Best players were Rice, Overs , Healy with consistent performances from Takanen, Johnson and 2nd gamer Greenwell.
A special thanks to Dave ‘ Sniffy ‘ Smith who played as a Swans top up given the to nominated sides Belconnen & Ainslie were unable to provide the maximum numbers.
Sydney were forced to bring 2 scholarship players also. This issue is something the league needs to look at given that now Canberra clubs are reneging on the agreement set at the start of the year where 2 clubs are asked to provide 3 top up players each week.
Given the results on the weekend where Belconnen won seniors by 19 goals and all their other grades won with their 4th grade having a bye I fail to see where they could not find 2 other players to ‘ top up’.
Perhaps David Wark ( AFL Canberra General Manager ) who wrote an article in the most recent AFL Canberra Record on player rotations should focus his energies on getting the Swans top up issue to be on a level playing field for every club , every round and let the AFL Canberra senior coaches decide on what methods they use to maximize and develop their playing list.
The other Runner
Last Modified on 16/07/2008 11:05