I’m not sure, in 128 years of VFL/AFL football, there has been a more shocking result than what happened on Saturday night at the Adelaide Oval.
Sydney, still top of the table and minor premiership favourites, if having surrendered actual flag favouritism to Brisbane owing to their recent down run of form, took on an inconsistent but occasionally formidable Port Adelaide outfit… and emerged having copped as brutal a butchering as you will see in professional sport.
It has been more than 30 years since the Swans copped a hiding greater than the 112 points the final margin swelled to when Ollie Wines landed the final body blow after the siren.
It has been even longer – 41 years, to be exact – since a team sitting atop the ladder was walloped by a greater margin.
This was, in every sense of the word, a historic night. And it means the worrying signs and collective losses that have steadily compiled over the last month and a half to eat away at Sydney’s once-impregnable hold on top spot not only can no longer be ignored, or justified, but are a beacon inviting the rest of the footy world to gorge themselves on what now looks suspiciously like a carcass.
And it’s worse than that – this margin honestly flattered Sydney. But for a bout of inaccuracy in the final quarter, this could have been even more humiliating for John Longmire’s men – 38 scores to 11, 95 fewer disposals, less than half the inside 50s (69 to 34), 22 marks inside 50 to four, and a 41-31 walloping in the clearances, is a pantsing of apocalyptic proportions.
It almost defeats the purpose of analysis – everything that could go wrong for the Swans did, and then even the things that couldn’t go wrong blew up in their faces too.
Take this utter backline howler in the first quarter to gift Port another goal, while already 39 points in arrears and scoreless:
You could talk about Matt Roberts giving Darcy Byrne-Jones far too much rope in the first place, or a pretty ordinary effort from James Jordon to impact the kick, or Ollie Florent ambitiously trying to take on the man mountain that is Esava Ratugolea dead smack in the hot spot with three teammates to pass to, or the horror handpass that ensured, or the inexplicable defensive system collapse that let Mitch Georgiades stand all by himself at the top of the goalsquare to slam through a seventh Power goal.
But what on earth is the point? This wasn’t a rarity – clumps of horrendous mistakes happened so regularly it would make even Adem Yze’s Richmond blush. At least their effort and endeavour can seldom be questioned, even if literally everything else can.
This wasn’t even the first calamity of the night: Harry Cunningham’s disastrous fumble, and then the Swans’ utter lack of any pressure on Willie Rioli as he gathered the ball, spun casually on his right and snapped home isn’t just un-Sydney-like – it’s un-VFL side-like.
Want more examples? Here’s another one: God knows why Peter Ladhams is trying to handball literally through opposing ruckman Jordan Sweet in the Power’s goalsquare, or why Cunningham is basically tackling him himself as he does it, so intent is he on receiving the ball, or why there are three other Swans standing around within arm’s reach of the play just waiting to see what happens, but it’s up there with the most embarrassing goals any side has conceded all year.
Not quite as humiliating, but every bit as extraordinary, was letting Dan Houston run free for a solid 20 metres to start the last quarter to receive from Charlie Dixon on the 50 and do what every single football fan, let alone club, knows is his wont: bang home a goal from long range.
I’ve got no idea who he was on, because the Swans were such a shambles by this point that it’s impossible to say who Houston’s direct opponent was at that or any moment in time; but ten metres off where Dixon has the ball, Sam Wicks is jogging away, back to play, without a care in the world, so when Houston arrives, it’s poor Logan McDonald, forced to stand the mark, who has to try and smother it too.
Okay, one more example and then we can move on: from Ollie Florent being comfortably out-spoiled from a much worse aerial position by Jason Horne-Francis, to somehow there being two Port players to one Swan inside their own attacking 50 – looking at you, Matt Roberts, jogging leisurely back while McDonald is stuck trying to defend two men, it’s yet another example that will give Longmire all the ammo he needs to tear his side a new one during the week.
To say this wasn’t Sydney is insufficient. Yes, Port Adelaide shut down the Swans’ strengths: Chad Warner was never given an inch by Willem Drew and co., repeatedly caught holding the ball as he tried and failed to break through a suffocating web that surrounded him at practically every stoppage. And yes, their kicking, once their most lethal weapon and the point of difference that separated them from the rest of the competition, was woeful; I don’t know how many times I’ll need to watch Taylor Adams head inside 50 in mountains of space and kick it over the head of a loose forward before the Swans brains trust starts to think that maybe that’s not his go and is hurting the team more than helping it.
But it’s darker than that. This Swans team didn’t have the energy, ambition, creativity or willingness to find a solution to the problems Port presented, as they did as little as a fortnight ago in coming back from a slow start against Brisbane.
They lacked the desire – or, more alarmingly, the fitness – to work back and protect their understaffed backline from the bombardment that came their way every second minute.
And their old weaknesses for contested ball and inside stoppage bulls, the ones rectified earlier in the season by the arrival of Brodie Grundy and ascension to elite status of Isaac Heeney, were laid bare in the most brutal fashion, as Drew, Horne-Francis, Ollie Wines, Connor Rozee and Zak Butters consistently and vigorously outhunted them for the hard ball and then spread with infinitely greater verve for the loose.
That this is the Swans’ second shocker in a row (though orders of magnitude worse than their undeniably ugly loss to the Bulldogs), and fifth in their last six games adds another layer to it. This isn’t just a one-off, understandable if not excusable, off night: this is the culmination of nearly two months of slow, steady and now rapid and jaw-dropping plummeting from their perch.
There’s no point dwelling on it anymore, and I suspect Longmire will have a similar approach during the week. The route forward now is to ask hard, deep and painful questions about exactly what has been going wrong, how they can be fixed, and what can be salvaged from a season that, for all the recent misery, has still mathematically been better than everyone else’s. For now.
Question one: how can speed be injected around the ball? Tom Papley’s absence in the last fortnight has been crucial, robbing the Swans of a regular centre bounce point of difference player who could be covered for defensively to let loose at key moments; but every side has injuries, and at this stage the additions to the on-ball group that Longmire has made over the last fortnight have dangerously destabilised a previously humming mix.
With Heeney out of form and Warner now far too easy to curb, it might be time to make Errol Gulden, who attended just 23 per cent of the Swans’ centre bounces on Saturday night, a permanent part of that inside group; a brilliant kick who makes great decisions in traffic, is both quick and agile and is as tough as an old boot in spite of all that, he’d add an extra dimension to a midfield that badly needs some non-Warner creativity.
Chad Warner. (Photo by Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Heck, at this point you might as well give Nick Blakey a crack at the odd centre bounce: Ed Richards has been flying since transitioning from an intercepting half-back to bona fide midfielder, and the Lizard is quite frankly just a taller, ganglier, better-kicking version of the Bulldogs gun.
That leads nicely to the next question: what to do with Callum Mills and Luke Parker? The latter was surplus to requirements when the Swans were flying at the start of the season, and as the sub in the last two weeks has come on with his matches effectively run and won already.
His effort to try and take on two Port players with a series of knock-on and lunges at the footy in the third quarter was the most effort I saw any Swans player bring to the Adelaide Oval, but in that were his clear limitations: he is no longer as spry nor as nimble as in his heyday, and the old Parker would have picked that ball up and tried to shrug the tackles rather than continually scrapping for it.
He’s a bizarre choice for sub, especially in a team that badly needs some leadership and ferocity in first quarters that are now reaching farcical proportions; surely it’s time to either unleash a desperate warrior with a wounded pride on the beginning of the game, or, if he’s no longer seen as part of the best 22, cut losses and let Caiden Cleary bring some youthful exuberance to a team in dire need of that as well.
Mills is a curlier question, because as captain his spot is secure and his leadership critical; but as I wrote in Six Points during the week, his addition to the on-ball brigade in his three matches since returning straight into the senior team has overstuffed the midfield with similar types.
You don’t need to break out the microscope to see that Mills just didn’t look right on Saturday night. Match fitness is one thing – and he’s definitely lacking that – but it’s the little instincts necessary to play senior footy at the highest level that are most conspicuously absent from the skipper’s game at the moment.
Look at him here against Jason Horne-Francis: first helplessly reaching out with one arm to try and fail to tackle him, then overcommitting away from the interior corridor where the rest of the play was unfolding, then lacking the spatial awareness to avoid tripping over the Power star as he was tackled to the ground and tripping over as Darcy Byrne-Jones speared through the wide-open gap and putting through Port’s eighth goal in a quarter and change.
Mills is a terrific and versatile footballer at his best. But it’s impossible to be at that level without not just a pre-season (see Oliver, C. for further examples) but an entire half a year as well; and at the moment, while not the grand summation of everything that is wrong with Sydney, is a conspicuous shoddy gear in a team which, for two-thirds of 2024, was a well-oiled machine purring beautifully.
Individually, there are more concerns: Aaron Francis has surely done his dash as an AFL footballer to the point where Longmire might honestly be better off Rory Lobbing McDonald if he wants some extra height in defence; I’m not sure the clumsy, lumbering Peter Ladhams was worth maintaining a three-tall forward structure when Joel Amartey was a late scratching; it baffles me why young Matt Roberts has become the defensive distributor, a difficult role to play especially when it’s time to defend, while the more experienced Jake Lloyd and Florent push up the ground for their kicks and leave the last line the responsibility of the last line to a guy still working his game out.
Structurally, there are others. The Swans’ tall forward line worked wonders when their midfield was breaking even and flying on attack, but now that the tables are turned it looks slow and weak below the knees as teams transition with ease against them. The Papley-less, Warner-inhibited midfield now looks one-paced and vulnerable, and there are so many in the queue for this that is leaves many being square-pegged into roles that play to their weaknesses and not their strengths, Adams the half-forward the finest example.
Part of this is the peril of being the hunted all season: as the standard bearer, more analysis will have gone into the Swans than any other team, with rivals trying to work out their secret sauce, their weaknesses, and how to combine the two to bring them down.
All good sides face it – Hawthorn regularly had vulnerable patches near the end of their triple-flag home-and-away runs, while Richmond in 2019 started slow before reaching peak form at the best time. Hell, just last year, Collingwood went from clear flag favourites to a vulnerable minor premier in the weeks leading into September.
But the very best adapt, respond, and hit back. And not only have Sydney proved incapable of doing that, at the moment it seems like they lack the energy or the wherewithal to even give Plan B a solid crack.
If there’s a good time to have a loss of this magnitude, one that rocks an entire club to the foundation stones, it’s probably when you’re still at least two premiership points clear on top. This is a calamity, but it is not doomsday yet.
Time is running out, but there are still three weeks – against more agreeable opposition than an always-dangerous Power outfit who have controlled this head-to-head for more than half a decade – to sort it out and get some confidence back into a badly shaken squad, if not wholly rectify the myriad of issues they face.
But either way, something has to give. The Swans might be top, but they’re no longer the number one seed: and unles something radical changes, a premiership that was theirs to lose a matter of days ago will only slip further and further out of their grasp.