Costly focus on Buddy
IF finals expose weaknesses, Sydney has 30 glaring reasons for concern.
A team featuring Lance “Buddy” Franklin should not struggle to score as often as the Swans did this season.
The 30 points scored in the 49-point loss to cross-town rival GWS in Saturday’s elimination final was the lowest score at the SCG.
If not for Tom Papley and Luke Parker’s junk-time goals, the Swans would have had the lowest finals score in more than 100 years.
The Swans weren’t able to get past 80 points in more than half their matches this year. Their 82.8 points a game average is 13th of the AFL’s 18 teams.
That is with Franklin, the greatest full-forward in a generation.
Coach John Longmire knows the Swans are too reliant on Franklin, who turns 32 in January, to kick a winning score.
“We’ve got some real youth there,” Longmire said of the Swans’ forward line. “And we’ve got a reliance on Lance.
“We don’t want that to happen and we want to change it. We lost our ruckman, our full-back and centre half-forward played six games this year.”
Tom McCartin is the Swans’ great hope. He is the youngest player in the AFL and played 15 games in the most difficult position on the ground, centre-half-forward.
He is still 18 and if Sam Reid doesn’t recover from his injury problems, McCartin will be asked to do even more.
The Giants exposed holes in Sydney’s supposed strength, contested football. Callan Ward, Stephen Coniglio, Jacob Hopper, Tim Tarranto, Dylan Shiel and co beat Josh Kennedy, Parker, Dan Hannebery, George Hewett and Kieren Jack by almost 40 in contested possessions.