Swans answer doubters with gritty win over Demons in AFL opener
They do things differently at the SCG. If they wheeled out Shannon Noll to sing Sweet Caroline at the MCG, there’d be concerned letters to the editor. This was a festive affair, a last sip of summer, a parachuted round designed to showcase Australian football in these parts, a chance to honour Sydney and South Melbourne champions of yore, and for the current list to mingle with spectators and former teammates half an hour out from the opening bounce.
So many of those champions being presented – Kennedy, Kirk, Kelly et al – were old school Bloods who thrived in games with no elbow room. The rub on the current crop has been that they’re not really a contested team at all, that all their strengths lie on the outside – personified by the hard-running, exquisitely skilled Errol Gulden and Nick Blakey’s oddly compelling reptilian runs. Could they win the coalface? Did they have enough dogs in the fight to match it with Viney, Petracca and Oliver?
It’s only round one, or whatever the sizzle merchants call it, but the Swans went a long way towards answering those questions last night. The soapy ball meant it was always going to be a scrap and a scramble and the home side excelled in the conditions. They beat the Dees in close and out wide. They were cleaner, better organised, and harder at the contest.
They were certainly challenged. The game opened up in the third term and the visitors looked ominous. They lowered their eyes and finally kicked straight. Bailey Fritsch, who has such a good record against the Swans, found his radar. And Christian Petracca gave us one of football’s more ominous sights, speed skating out the front of a stoppage to square things up.
But they completely ran out of fizz in the final term, venturing into the forward fifty just once in the opening 15 minutes. By then, the Swans had slammed on five goals, the pitch invaders had been barrelled into the turf, and the 150-year celebrations were on in earnest. The numbers told the story for Sydney – ahead on every key stat apart from centre square clearances. Isaac Heeney, predominantly working through the midfield, recorded 18 contested touches, seven more than his previous best, as well as a dozen clearances. He was perhaps disappointing last year, and in danger of becoming a jack-of-all, master-of-none type footballer, but he was clearly best afield last night. When things got wobbly in the third term, he was the steadying influence.
The Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy contest was the major intrigue heading into the game, and in many ways the reason it was fixtured at all. Both acquitted themselves well, but Grundy took the honours. His physicality, particularly later in the game, was telling. These two have considerable history, squaring off nine times between 2014 and 2019, with Gawn registering six Brownlow votes to Grundy’s none. “I just felt so connected from a values piece,” Grundy said when he joined the club. “I just felt really aligned. You’ve got to be agile in these times” That’s LinkedIn-speak. Last night, whether on his hands and knees farming out handballs or giving Gawn the slip around the ground, his football spoke volumes.
It was a familiar story for his former side. They had to work so much harder for their goals. They peppered the top of the goal-square but were constantly picked off. Jacob van Rooyen competed hard, but was outnumbered all night. Josh Schache, it goes without saying, is not David Neitz.
Some of us had the temerity to question the Swans heading into this season. Could the second-worst clearance team in 2023 cover Mills, Parker and Adams? Did a post-Lance Franklin forward line have enough firepower? And could they go toe-to-toe with one of the most brutal midfields in Australia. A week into autumn, they answered those questions emphatically.