As a Sydney supporter, I've never a doubt that we can win every game we play but didn't really see us in the form to beat Freo at home last Thursday night.
Watching the 1st my lack of confidence in our team defense of late was put to ease as we simply smothered them in the 1st quarter with some scoreboard return for the Swans.
That defense continued into the 2nd but with little scoreboard reward for both teams.
With 11 straight misses for Freo in the 1st half I just knew that crowd would erupt once they did goal, which happened 30secs into the 3rd term and even though they were scoring heavily, we also managed to score in the 3rd (6 goals to 3 Freo's way) to go into 3/4 time 2 points ahead.
Even with 1omins remaining we were still only a goal down but in 14mins of football they piled on 7.3 to 0 and it was out to bed.
Stas-wiser there was nothing obvious that set the Dockers apart except for out lack of ability to start chains and then do anything with them, the same problem we had with Brisbane 2 games back.
It doesn't get any easier with the Crow's defense either going into this Friday night so we better extract the digit quickly.
The Swans got back on the winning side of the ledger over a dwindling Western Bulldogs.
The Dogs continues with their rolling back team defense which turned us into a kick-mark team and we only managed 366 meters gained by handball, our lowest for the year and which was actually bested by the Dogs at 413m.
The Swans were able to break even at worse in the contested metrics which is all you really need to against the Bulldogs as they don't really get you anywhere else.
Just 3 clips today where we look at Sydney at center bounce clearance x 2 and also Sydney performing some forward press defense.
I actually didn't get around to watching Coll/Rich from 10 days ago until this weekend so I've lumped it with the Coll/GC game from this past weekend.
The Pies have the best team-system in the AFL to be in every game they play but not enough talent to win enough of them.
Nick Daicos is the constant, and De Goey is having one of his "up" years but then it's a raffle as to who will support those 2 any given week.
Ive got them making the 10 where they could win a game or 2 but that's about it I reckon for the Pies in 2026.
The Suns have been THE biggest disappointment in 2026 and that's including a competition that has Essendon in it!
$3.5 million invested at center bounce is a huge price to pay for a poultry 15th placed ranking in clearances so they really need to change up the mix in there, but they are playing half the team they did last year with most of the incoming players being young but they still wouldn't have thought this is where they'd be right now.
The Lions are back in a big way and unfortunately for everyone else they still have Coleman, Zorko, Allen and McCluggage to come back into their probable best 18, let alone best 23.
The Cats are sliding a touch at the moment having lost 3 of their past 4 with a bye in there as well and have just seemed a touch off the pace all season long with Cameron struggling bigtime with that arm issue.
A bit of a different tact with the game analysis this week with a huge focus on the game itself then isolated coaching concepts like I normally do.
Going into the game Brisbane had regained some form beating Gold Coast and Richmond by really doubling down on their stoppage/clearance game as well as transition defense.
In those 2 games they were +29 in first possession, +22 in clearance, +6 in center clearance, + 43 in scores from stoppage and + 24 in scores from turnover.
On transition defense they won 90% of the stats for chain to score %, d50 to f50 %, d50 to score %, defensive half to f50 % and defensive half to score % but more importantly kept both teams to well below league average in those metrics.
Moving to the Sydney game, those metrics remained a huge focus on stopping the Swans' handball chain game and although the Swans still managed 705m gained from handball, the eye test proved it just wasn't the same as we've seen with a little glimpse in the last quarter when the game was done and dusted.
SYDNEY PLAN
In the last 2 previous games, the Swans had been spanked at stoppage (-20 in clearance against St Kilda and Port Adelaide) and would have been spooked by the Lions last games as mentioned above.
Sydney opted to start with an extra around the ball which didn't help things (-13 in this game) but then also leaves Harris Andrews twiddling his thumbs in anticipation for intercept after intercept.
BRISBANE PLAN
With offensive advantage at stoppage they simply had to focus on denying Sydney corridor space to run handball chains through.
SYDNEY HANDBALL CHAINS
Sydney lead the league in handball meters gained by a fair margin to the 2nd best team in that area (696 to 565 Collingwood) and this is it looked like once they were able to get it going in this game, albeit in the last quarter when the pressure from Brisbane was way down and fait enough.
BRISBANE DEFENDING HANDBALL CHAINS
The Lions' mids were rinsed good and proper a month ago for a lack of 2-way running on defense but were possibly just trying to get through the middle part of the season unscathed and fill up for the run home, which they definitely seem to be doing no going by the defensive run to shut off corridor on Sydney handball chains early in the game.
With Brisbane taking away corridor as shown earlier, you can turn them into a wide kick-mark team and then you simply have to crowd the space just in front of the kicker (but out of the protected space of course), to limit and runners from behind to receive handballs and the ensuring overlap.
Brisbane were diligent here but I also suspect Sydney were a bit hesitant to be so attacking once the goals started to flow for the Lions.
As good as Brisbane's preparation was for this game, Sydney left a lot of potential scoring opportunities on the table as players didn't give handballs when they normally would have so far in 2026 which I'm sure will be on the review tape this week.
With Brisbane's defense and our poor transition game the stats were startling:
Chain to Score - 23.8% season average to 18.7% in this game
D50 to F50 - 27.7 % to 13.7% (only went 2 for 29 in the first half!)
D50 to Score - 11.91% to 2.0%
Defensive Half to F50 - 35.5% to 22.7%
Defensive Half to Score - 15% to 6.7%
Other parts of the game that didn't help and was totally out of character was clangers (41-25 at half time) with many of the coming out of defensive 50 resulting 41pts from turnover for the Lions (again by half time) v 44pts average off turnover per (full) game so far in 2026.
Personally, I saw signs that we/Sydney were at least half to blame for this result so we can turn this around pretty quick, especially getting some troops back that are very important to what we do in McInerney and Papley + more games into Gulden who was well off the pace.
Much like the opposition 4 weeks ago, hopefully this is the kick in the backside we need to really kickstart a finals tilt.
80% of our training is live which means there's problem solving, game representation and every player involved in some shape or form all the time.
There are minimal lines, standing around and cone to cone drills because there is very limited learning taken from that type of training and without learning you can't improve.
We're currently sitting 4th on the ladder and eyeing a finals birth which is a top 5 format.
We had just 3 players carry over from last season so we were always going to be better in the 2nd half of the season then the first half but have had some heartbreaking losses that we need to get on top of going forward all against other top 5 teams (1pt, 4pts and 4pts with an after siren missed goal!).
1 thing I've found with live training activities is that once you start using them as much as I do, then cone to cone drills just doesn't do it for the players and they simply go through the motions when you do them which is great because then it's pushing you as a coach to design and deliver them on a consistent basis.
Small group personal training done the right way. Train in a group - do YOUR OWN program. PT studio located in the heart of South Yarra on Surrey Road North, just off Toorak Road. 1on1 personal training also available. Don't do everyone else's program, get personal with your training.
