SYDNEY v COLINGWOOD GAME ANALYSIS

                   

A very, very interesting game Friday night between the Swans and Pies.

The Pies are THE most organised team in the AFL and with a team down on personnel, a solid plan was always going to be in place for this one, especially around taking away corridor use for the Swans, that North were able to do to good success last week.

Before I go any further into the senior game I took a look at the VFL game that was on TV against the 2 teams who probably mirror their AFL/VFL teams playing style the best and see what I could find.

What was evident early was Colingwood's defensive plan to take away corridor, a prelude to the senior game hours later as shown in the first clip.

The middle clips show the Swans VFL, bolstered by the senior team only missing 2 players, dominating in spite of that plan, rebounding from defensive 50, using corridor and having more numbers at almost every contest.

The final clip shows the Pies applying the clamps defensively on a Sydney defensive 50 rebound, following the principles of Forward Press Defense perfectly. 

Getting back to the senior game, it was again very evident on the Pies focus of taking away corridor that did rattle the Swans but as stated in the clip below and from Coxy's 1/4 time interview, the players knew what the Pies would probably try and do, had wide options to counteract that with, but just tried to force everything corridor regardless.

The result? 

Down 33 points in the 2nd quarter.

In the 2nd quarter we were able to wrestle game back to neutral, but still were down by 21pts at the half as while we took the time to fully adapt to the Pies defense, they turned us into a kicking team which is much easier and predictable to defend.

Enter the 3rd quarter and the Oscar Steene injury.

We turned a 21pt deficit into a 6pt lead on the back of 6.6 to 2.3 and some dominant 3rd quarter stats.

The Pies generated 10 inside 50's from 27 defensive chains in the 1st half v 1 from 17 in the 3rd as the Swans had total forward half field position dominance with 25 - 8 inside 50's resulting in 12 scores.

According to the best stats in football, the Swans managed 41 points from stoppage to 11 with 52 of our 81pts from the forward half, showing Grundy' dominance with 46/62 of the game's hit outs.

Sysney also managed 18 - 1 hit outs to advantage where I assume a lot of them were in the forward half that gave us a leg up to the 41pts we scored from stoppage.

In the end a win for both teams I suppose.

The Pies came with and carried a plan that gave them every chance to win and the Swans won in a completely different manner to what we have been and adjusted in-game successfully (not a usual Sydney strength).