Bonz
🤺🤺🤺
Honestly a few weeks ago, I was strongly thinking about titling this game Sydney vs The bye, but since then two things have happened.
1. Sydney have fallen out of form (more on this and my theories later).
2. North not only have found a spine, but are actually playing some excellent football.
In the last 5 weeks, the biggest margin the Kangaroo's have had has been a 17 point loss to the Western Bulldogs who got a fair chunk of assistance that we Swans fans are a little to familiar with. In their other games they had an incredibly impressive win against GC, a good performance against WCE, and two impressive performances against Melbourne and Collingwood (a game they were absolutely ROBBED in).
North have one of the most talented lists in the competition and it has finally started to bear fruit, they also match up incredibly well on us so yes, this is a major danger game.
TIME: 1:45pm Saturday
LOCATION: SCG
WEATHER: 16degrees sunny with a moderate north eastern wind
BONZ'S LOCATION DURING GAME: Sitting on couch watching game with a ham and cheese toastie, possibly nursing a concussion from boxing sparring session that morning.
Previous Meetings: Sydney have won the last five games between the two clubs, but three matches have been decided by less than 2 goals, one by 14 points and one by 38.
How do North match up on Sydney? Actually quite well, they have a forward line that can push our defence with Larkey and several dangerous medium talls than we usually struggle to match up with. Their midfield has had the edge over ours in recent years, with the loss of Heeney this could potentially spell trouble.
What has gone wrong for the Swans in recent weeks? To put it frankly, our efforts has not been there in quarters/ patches of a game. When our intensity drops off we can leak scores, and that has been how teams have been punishing is. Another large aspect of this has been our finishing over the last fortnight has been horrible, of we go by expected scores in the last fortnight (Expected average score by chances generated? we would have beated St Kilda by 14 points and would have won against Fremantle by 18.
Why has our pressure dropped off? Are the Swans going through a leak training load?
I honestly think yes we are currently putting together a tough training block, depending on the individual and the training program it takes 8-12 weeks (usually closer to 12) to see significant gains from a difficult training block, and around 10 weeks of hard repetition to hard training into practice. As usually it takes 4-6 weeks for fatigue to peak, this lines up perfectly with our bye round where we likely would have started this block.
Now this isn't enough to excuse us for our performances, but a difficult block can affect performances by 10-15%, but as you ease off it, gain active rest we should start seeing improvements over the next 3-4 weeks before ideally fully hitting our stride after the pre-finals bye in September
Where do we deploy Jordan?
Sheezel easily, I believe one of our midfielders may go head to head with Simpkin in the midfield to free themselves up.
How do I believe the match will play out?
I expect North to start out of the blocks with a high amount of dash and run, but as they are a young team they won't be able to sustain it, we should then ideally be able to run them down and grab the win, the key will be weathering the storm and taking the most of our own chances when we get momentum putting the game out of reach.
Final prediction
Sydney by 22 points, Bonz to have no concussion.
1. Sydney have fallen out of form (more on this and my theories later).
2. North not only have found a spine, but are actually playing some excellent football.
In the last 5 weeks, the biggest margin the Kangaroo's have had has been a 17 point loss to the Western Bulldogs who got a fair chunk of assistance that we Swans fans are a little to familiar with. In their other games they had an incredibly impressive win against GC, a good performance against WCE, and two impressive performances against Melbourne and Collingwood (a game they were absolutely ROBBED in).
North have one of the most talented lists in the competition and it has finally started to bear fruit, they also match up incredibly well on us so yes, this is a major danger game.
TIME: 1:45pm Saturday
LOCATION: SCG
WEATHER: 16degrees sunny with a moderate north eastern wind
BONZ'S LOCATION DURING GAME: Sitting on couch watching game with a ham and cheese toastie, possibly nursing a concussion from boxing sparring session that morning.
Previous Meetings: Sydney have won the last five games between the two clubs, but three matches have been decided by less than 2 goals, one by 14 points and one by 38.
How do North match up on Sydney? Actually quite well, they have a forward line that can push our defence with Larkey and several dangerous medium talls than we usually struggle to match up with. Their midfield has had the edge over ours in recent years, with the loss of Heeney this could potentially spell trouble.
What has gone wrong for the Swans in recent weeks? To put it frankly, our efforts has not been there in quarters/ patches of a game. When our intensity drops off we can leak scores, and that has been how teams have been punishing is. Another large aspect of this has been our finishing over the last fortnight has been horrible, of we go by expected scores in the last fortnight (Expected average score by chances generated? we would have beated St Kilda by 14 points and would have won against Fremantle by 18.
Why has our pressure dropped off? Are the Swans going through a leak training load?
I honestly think yes we are currently putting together a tough training block, depending on the individual and the training program it takes 8-12 weeks (usually closer to 12) to see significant gains from a difficult training block, and around 10 weeks of hard repetition to hard training into practice. As usually it takes 4-6 weeks for fatigue to peak, this lines up perfectly with our bye round where we likely would have started this block.
Now this isn't enough to excuse us for our performances, but a difficult block can affect performances by 10-15%, but as you ease off it, gain active rest we should start seeing improvements over the next 3-4 weeks before ideally fully hitting our stride after the pre-finals bye in September
Where do we deploy Jordan?
Sheezel easily, I believe one of our midfielders may go head to head with Simpkin in the midfield to free themselves up.
How do I believe the match will play out?
I expect North to start out of the blocks with a high amount of dash and run, but as they are a young team they won't be able to sustain it, we should then ideally be able to run them down and grab the win, the key will be weathering the storm and taking the most of our own chances when we get momentum putting the game out of reach.
Final prediction
Sydney by 22 points, Bonz to have no concussion.
