Reinforcements are on their way as Sydney seek to solidify an identity and set standards heading into 2026.
Things haven’t gone well for Dean Cox in year one – more than halfway through the season, they’re sitting 13th with five wins and eight losses.
Earlier in the season, this column was concerned about a lack of uniqueness under Cox. To be fair, it was hard to manage given the key personnel absent that had led the Swans to last year’s grand final.
Now, with Errol Gulden, Tom Papley and Joel Amartey all named for this weekend’s big clash against Port Adelaide, most of the big names are back.
Win this week and the Swans are two games outside the eight. Their reward for being the best home-and-away season team in the AFL in 2024 was a tougher fixture than most, so a charge into a finals spot from here would be nothing short of a miracle.
Still, there’s plenty to gain from the second half of the season regardless of whether finals are in the cards. We’ve already seen the predictable difference that Callum Mills has made in defence marshalling the troops, acting as the fulcrum to both intercepting and counter-attacking.
A win against Richmond is hardly some sort of rolled-gold, foolproof example of success, but clearly, the Swans were far better structured with Harry Cunningham’s positioning and Mills’ return to bolster an under siege backline.
More importantly though, their returns were felt in the flow-on effect, where their positioning allowed more freedom for Nick Blakey, who played his best game of the season by far. Youngster Riley Bice was likewise freed up and played his best game in a couple of months.
Ideally, Cox wants his team to control, then slingshot. One would suppose it’s not dissimilar to John Longmire’s Swans, except it feels like Cox would prefer his team’s forwards to roll up to the ball in the same way Geelong do, in order to flick the proverbial switch to counter faster.
It was impossible to do that with Blakey being so accountable. Mills frees that up.
A lot of the Swans’ previous success has come from generating scores off turnovers, whereas a shift this year has seen a lot more scoring opportunities develop out of the back half. What has hurt is that they’re still one of the worst teams in the league in terms of generating scoring shots per inside 50, and their ability to mark the ball in attack is as bad as it has been for the club in a while, which has only emphasised the importance of breaking the shackles for Blakey.
In offence, we can expect an uptick in, at the very least, threat. Amartey and Hayden McLean both seek to be quality over quantity in different ways, which is difficult if those sort of players aren’t always consistently demanding to be targeted, but to have them both is a welcomed return for a Sydney team whose retention offensively has been poor.
More than anything, we’re talking about gravity here. McLean can work hard and offer a threat aerially, with his follow-up work at ground level a genuine point of difference if his confidence is up.
Amartey is the X-factor, who can fire up for 15 minutes and help change a game.
Ideally, the team isn’t solely reliant on those two – last year, both ranked outside the club’s top-10 for score involvements per game, yet they combined for three marks inside 50 every week and were the two most successful offensive threats the Swans had. That’s enough to warrant the close attention from the opposition, which then frees up Will Hayward, who has been sat on for large parts of the season.
Has Hayward had a bad season? No, but he has had to work harder than ever just to try offer a target. It’s unquantifiable statistically but watch a Swans game and you’ll see how much he is moving around in the forward 50, almost having to act as a quasi-key forward in a sense.
When we consider gravity in attack, is there anyone that must draw more attention for the Swans than the returning Papley?
His dynamism alone is imperative to the function of what Cox wants to implement. Presumably returning from a long layoff, he’ll play closer to goal, letting Hayward and Braeden Campbell occupy the half-forward spots. Their pressure is good, as is their work rate.
Cox wants his forwards to work up and help apply pressure and create space behind them. The key forwards don’t need much of the ball, but they’ll like space. Papley will too – he’s a magnet that creates it just by moving himself.
Giving Campbell, an elite user, ample opportunity to hit up his key forwards with one of the best smalls in the game at their feet, and with Blakey galloping off half back and helping catch the opposition off guard in one-on-one situations, Sydney are well-placed to average well more than a scoring shot from 41 per cent of their inside 50s, as is the case currently. That number was at 48 last season, ranked second.
The midfield is where there has been a little development under Cox, but it has sorely missed its best user by far in Gulden. In recent years, the Swans have heavily relied on Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner and Gulden to dominate in midfield and start many of their scoring chains – those are their three best players full stop.
The numbers have remained similar for Heeney and Warner, who have battled manfully, but their contributions are in a somewhat similar manner; they hit the scoreboard themselves and spend plenty of time up forward in order to do so. Gulden matches these two for score involvement numbers, but his dare through his incredible running power, offering width and a target, then using it in an elite manner by himself, is unmatched.
The Swans have finally given Angus Sheldrick more responsibility and he’s a solid inside midfielder, but there aren’t many layers to his game. James Rowbottom continues to be the heart of the engine room with a few more strings to his bow, but pressure’s his game. With more responsibility in the middle, Justin McInerney’s influence on the game has regressed.
Gulden’s return is transformative in the sense that, while he isn’t slated to be involved in a bunch of centre bounces or be the main guy at stoppages, he’s elusive and fitter than almost anyone else in the league.
Chad Warner and Errol Gulden celebrate a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Sydney have struggled to find anyone who can genuinely hold width well without Gulden and with McInerney spending more time inside. With him back, the Swans can look to run in waves in transition with more free areas to roam, as designed by the players available. For that reason, Gulden is surely the Swans’ most important player.
Part two of Cox’s freshman year starts this weekend in Adelaide against a plucky Port team looking to win in similar fashion to the controlling way they did against Melbourne last round.
Put simply, Sydney is a better team than they were post-bye, and should see themselves as such. A miracle run to finals seems unlikely, but at this stage of the season and with this squad, winning is much more important than any eye on the draft.
This feels a bit like the inverse of 2024. Right now, no one is threatened by the Swans.
If they don’t play finals themselves in 2025, they’re going to cause a few upsets that shape the ladder on their way to 2026.
Dem Panopouloshttps://https://ift.tt/O9bFJDe cavalry is back – and Sydney are officially still a September threat
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