There are two main reasons why Sydney dismantled Port Adelaide to book a second grand final berth in three years on Friday night – and they’re pretty obvious.
One: the Swans, for the first time since June, looked properly, fully back. This wasn’t a win borne of a singular outstanding quarter to escape with victory despite being largely outplayed, as was the tale of their qualifying final triumph over GWS. This was wall-to-wall dominance – even in the first quarter, where they’ve been notoriously sloppy – over an opponent incapable of matching their devastating foot skills, remarkable speed and wonderful decision-making forward of the ball.
In all the stats that made Sydney unbackable premiership favourites mid-season, they ran riot. Their disposal efficiency sat pretty at 76.7 per cent, a figure they hovered around all evening – to half time, they were kicking at 63 per cent in their forward half, significantly above the league average.
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Their marks inside 50 soared, nearly all on the lead as forwards doing the hard yards were honoured time and time again by Errol Gulden, Nick Blakey, Chad Warner and co.; ditto their uncontested possession numbers, with Port’s dominance of the clearance count and at the coalface counting for nought against their inability to deny the Swans the ball movement they relish.
Most notably, 12 goals to three quarter time from turnovers – half those from defensive half – was the most by any team to that point in a match all season. With 60 more disposals at that point, and 75 by the final siren, against a team which loves denying the opposition as much of the ball as possible, the Swans were so far superior to the Power that it doesn’t even bear comparison.
Heeney was brilliant, both as a damaging, untaggable midfielder and as a powerful overhead presence inside 50 and around the field; his twin one-on-one contested marks made Jase Burgoyne, best afield in Port’s semi final win, look a schoolboy. Joel Amartey had his best game up forward since that nine-goal haul against Adelaide; whether he was hobbled or just totally outclassed, Brandon Zerk-Thatcher was given as big a bath as you could get from a key forward who only kicked three goals, and in reality should have had several more.
Gulden did as he pleased on the outside, as did Blakey; Jake Lloyd continued his late-season push for ‘best wingman in the game’ honours, and after a slow start two third-quarter goals and a heap of influence from Warner saw the Swans begin to dominate even the hitherto Port-controlled clearance count.
From a defensive perspective, the Swans were devastating too: the sheer amount of run down tackles all evening long would have delighted John Longmire as much as any of the more prominent highlights. The amount of early Power turnovers – all four of the Swans’ first-quarter goals were directly from Port defensive half turnovers – showed they’d expertly read Geelong’s playbook on how to stop the Power, with Tom Papley and Will Hayward plus a hard-working on-ball brigade laying crunching tackles, pulling off timely spoils and gleefully intercepting every time Port tried to find the corridor.
Most brutally dealt with was Travis Boak – with three separate defensive half turnovers directly leading to goals, the Power veteran had himself a shocker of dystopian proportions. It would be a seriously unfitting farewell if this is indeed his final AFL game.
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This was the performance a team that deserves to go into a grand final as red-hot favourites, regardless of whether they play Geelong or Brisbane – they simply could not have found a better time to put together the four-quarter performance that they struggled to produce even when they were ripping through everyone in the first half of the season.
But the second reason was just as crucial: Port, against an opponent they’d bested eight times in a row heading in, up against the team they’d monstered by 112 points a mere two months ago, came in with a tactic straight out of the 1980s – and Ken Hinkley watched from the bench as it blew up in their faces.
This game was effectively decided by the Power’s profligacy going inside 50 in the first half, when enough of the game was in their control for them to consider themselves well and truly in the hunt.
But the style was simple, predictable, and maddeningly repetitive: Jordon Sweet or Jason Horne-Francis would force a clearance, the ball would come out, a Power player would get a second or two in the clear rushing forward… and bomb a long, high ball to no one in particular and pray Mitch Georgiades or Esava Ratugolea or Charlie Dixon could pull down a contested mark that looked less and less likely the longer the evening went on.
The result was the Power, having taken 22 marks inside 50 in their Swans smashing back in August, had three to half time from 31 inside 50s – and one was a last-minute Swans hack that Willie Rioli took 49 metres out, proceeding to not make the distance with his shot.
Once the ball hit the ground – and that was 99 per cent of the time – Port were at sea, unable to inflict anywhere near the scale of the Swans’ turnovers in their attacking half.
Isaac Heeney takes a contested mark. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/AFL Photos/Getty Images)
While he battled hard and was given credit by commentators for competing well enough to bring the ball to ground, Dixon’s four kicks for the evening and solitary goal, as well as being the only player without a tackle, told of his critical weaknesses that allowed the Swans’ pacy defenders to run rings around him.
A moment in the third quarter at half-forward, where Dixon had the ball, allowed himself to be dispossessed, and was then shunted away from the footy and sprinted away from by Lewis Melican, no one’s idea of a speedster, spoke volumes. Off the back of a similarly disastrous qualifying final – and missing the semi final through an illness that feels increasingly like a blessing for the Power – it would surprise no one for this to be his final game.
Quinton Narkle, given the chance to start for the second week in a row after weeks as the sub? Zero influence. And as the Swans took the ball away from Port’s slow, ineffectual forward line time and again, one couldn’t help but wondering whether the tackling pressure of the dropped Jed McEntee or the starting sub Francis Evans wouldn’t have been rather handy.
That’s how you blow a significant clearance differential, especially from centre bounces – in 2024, Port have ranked second from scoring from centre bounces, at 27.9 per cent. They had one behind from 10 centre clearances to half time, precisely because the delivery once they’d won it was substandard.
Port looked for all the world like a team which had a laserlike focus on winning several key stats at stoppages, and assumed that controlling those would mean controlling the match. Playing the way they did meant Sydney would have needed to be defensively off to an even greater degree than in even their home-and-away horror show for them to stand a chance.
Once they lost possession, they couldn’t get it back – the Swans simply aren’t a team you can give 131 marks to and expect to not be shredded.
Not helping matters was their fixation throughout to guard the corridor – a reasonable strategy given the way the Swans usually play – only to be taken completely by surprise when the Swans instead went down the boundary and lost none of their effectiveness.
By quarter time, Sydney were taking the corridor just six per cent of the time, comfortably lower than their usual modus operandi – and it didn’t make a bit of difference.
Outrun, outplayed, outhunted and thoroughly outcoached – this was Port’s preliminary final in a nutshell.
It’s far from as embarrassing as the disaster that was their 2021 prelim loss, and it’s unlikely to cost Hinkley his job.
But it proves once again that, on the big stage against an outstanding opponent, Port Adelaide are in every possible facet a clear rung below.