2024 AFL Season Previews: Sydney
After an underwhelming season, can the 2022 Grand Finalists get back to the top table?
I’m kicking off my 2024 season previews by looking at the eight teams competing in Opening Round. Here’s a look at the other team playing in the very first game: Sydney.
2023 ladder position: 8th* (12 wins, 10 losses, 1 draw – eliminated at elimination final stage)
2023 best-and-fairest: Errol Gulden
Senior coach: John Longmire
Story of the season
Sydney had the wildest swings between great and terrible luck of any side in 2023. On one hand, they were crippled by an injury crisis, suffering medium-to-long term injuries to Callum Mills, Logan McDonald, Dane Rampe, Joel Amartey, and both McCartin brothers among others. The concussion Paddy McCartin suffered in Round 4 would prove to be his final ever game. Yet despite that bad luck, the Swans also won two games they probably shouldn’t have. In their Round 10 match, they were given a free kick and 50 metre penalty (which resulted in the winning goal) after North Melbourne accidentally exceeded their interchange cap. And who could forget Round 23 at the Adelaide Oval, where the Swans were chased down by Adelaide, only for Ben Keays’ late snap to be incorrectly ruled a behind (although it should be said, there would still have been enough time for Sydney to kick a goal from the centre bounce). Sydney played pretty badly, by their standards, all year. They had key players missing. They jagged some lucky wins. And yet, they still gave a red-hot Carlton a hell of a game in the Elimination Final.
Summary of game style
John Longmire is living a mid-life crisis. The veteran coach cut his teeth learning from Paul Roos’ dogged, stoppage-heavy style. His early success as a senior coach was built on a foundation of excellent contested football. In 2016, Sydney were #1 in the AFL for contested possessions and #2 for contested marks. And yet, for each of the last few seasons, Longmire has been stepping on the accelerator with a little more force.
In 2023, Sydney were bottom-four for contested possession and clearance differential. That was partly due to their ruck weakness. But it’s also the product of deliberate choices. The Swans have become a team that relies heavily on their running and ball movement to score. They were #4 in the AFL for scoring chains launched by an intercept possession or clearance, and #3 for playing on from a kick-in (as Crows fans know, the Swans don’t wait around after a behind). And hey, if you’ve got it – flaunt it. At their best, the Swans pick holes in an opposition zone with their kicking, or just run through it at great speed via the likes of Nick Blakey. It’s no surprise they still ranked fifth in the AFL for expected score.
Going the other way, the Swans offset their key position defensive weakness by applying huge amounts of pressure on the ball carrier, which saw them rank #5 for turnovers and #1 for fewest scores conceded from opposition defensive 50 chains. The Swans are frantic and exciting to watch. The Bloods and Thunder football of the mid-2000s, this ain’t.
List changes
In:
Will Green (2023 National Draft, pick #16)
Caiden Cleary (2023 National Draft, pick #24)
Patrick Snell (2023 National Draft, pick #53)
Indhi Kirk (2023 Rookie Draft)
Taylor Adams (traded from Collingwood)
Brodie Grundy (traded from Melbourne)
James Jordon (free agent – Melbourne)
Joel Hamling (free agent – Fremantle)
Out:
Dylan Stephens (traded to North Melbourne)
Ryan Clarke (delisted)
Will Gould (delisted)
Hugo Hall-Kahan (delisted)
Cameron Owen (delisted)
Lachlan Rankin (delisted)
Marc Sheather (delisted)
Lance Franklin (retired)
Tom Hickey (retired)
Paddy McCartin (retired)
List profile
Number of top-10 draft picks: five (tied for fourth-fewest)
Average age at Opening Round: 24.6 (eighth-oldest)
Average number of games played: 78.4 (fifth-most)
Apparently, John Longmire and Manager of List Strategy and Recruitment Kinnear Beatson have taken some inspiration from Collingwood when tinkering with their list ahead of the season. After losing to the Swans by a point in the 2022 Elimination Final, Collingwood picked up Dan McStay, Bobby Hill and Tom Mitchell to address specific weaknesses in their list. The latter two starred on Grand Final day as the Pies won their 16th VFL/AFL Premiership. The Swans have opted for a similar approach, ditching their decade-long reluctance to bring in players via trades or free agency by bringing in Brodie Grundy, Taylor Adams and James Jordon to plug gaps in the ruck and inside midfield.
Bringing in two 30 year-olds (Grundy technically isn’t, but will be a month into the season) shifts the Swans firmly into Win Now territory – probably the correct call given they made it to the Grand Final in 2022. Yet the interesting thing is that some of their key contributors are just getting started. 21 year-old (!) Errol Gulden emerged as one of the best players in the AFL and won the Swans’ Best & Fairest in a landslide. But Chad Warner (22) and Nick Blakey (23, just, as I’m writing) also finished in the top five.
Line rankings
Defence: Above Average
Midfield: Elite
Forward: Above Average
Ruck: Above Average
The case for optimism
More than perhaps any clubs besides Geelong and Hawthorn, Sydney deserve the benefit of the doubt. They know what they’re doing. No club has made more grand finals in the 21st century, and their drafting and retention are best in class. So, to borrow a much-maligned phrase from US sports, supporters should trust the process.
On the field, the case for optimism in 2023 rests on two foundations – two and a half, actually. The first is that Sydney have identified their main areas of weakness and pursued players to address them. The major weakness was, as noted before, clearances. Sydney had the second-worst clearance differential of any side last season. To fix that, they’ve brought in Brodie Grundy and Taylor Adams. We can argue if Brodie Grundy is still in his peak years, but, with respect to Tom Hickey and Peter Ladhams, he should definitely constitute an improvement. If Sydney’s ruck improves, so will their ability to win the ball. Taylor Adams will also help in that regard. The nuggety ex-Collingwood midfielder should thrive getting in and under and dishing out handballs to the likes of Gulden and Warner. Meanwhile, reports from pre-season suggest that Joel Hamling is set to slot straight into a backline that looked undersized following Paddy McCartin’s retirement. That could patch up Sydney’s second weakness – key position defenders.
The second reason Swans fans should feel confident heading into 2024 is that it’s improbable they’ll suffer the same bad luck with injuries. Only the West Coast Eagles suffered more injuries to their best 22 (and they apparently angered the Old Gods, or broke hundreds of mirrors, or something). Important players like Callum Mills, Logan McDonald, Dane Rampe missed significant chunks of football. Lack of availability of personnel was just as much of a culprit to Sydney’s underwhelming year as the team’s deficiencies in the contest. When I first wrote this post, only Callum Mills, who injured himself on Mad Monday, was a doubt to start the season. The latest news is that veteran midfielder Luke Parker broke his arm during the pre-season game against Greater Western Sydney and will be out for an as-yet unspecified period of time. So it’s not been the greatest of starts on the “stay healthy” front.
A third cause for optimism, although it’s probably not as prominent as the two listed above, is the expected continued improvement of Sydney’s young players. Normally I wouldn’t specifically mention this – every side has promising young players. But the Swans are unique in that despite not having a particularly young list overall (the eighth-oldest, in fact), many of their best players are young – and thus have more room to improve. It’s hard to imagine Errol Gulden getting much better, but his age suggests he will. Ditto for the likes of Chad Warner, Angus Sheldrick, and Nick Blakey.
All the above means Sydney supporters should feel confident that last season (not 2022) was the aberration. And the fact is, despite some flaws and a bad run with injuries, they still came close to winning a final. Injuries aren’t as noticeable as the two fortunate results which got them into the eight. But they had just as big an impact on Sydney’s season.
The case for pessimism
I think John Longmire has made the strategically correct call to chase a flag in an era without any true superteams. But I also think there are still some unanswered questions about Sydney’s ability to go all the way.
On paper, the acquisition of Brodie Grundy and Taylor Adams makes sense. For the last few years, Sydney have been a high-variance team from stoppages – scoring and conceding a lot. Last year, that balance went in the wrong direction. Merely elevating Sydney’s ruck and clearance performance to middling should be enough to take them back to the top four. However, there’s no disputing that Grundy’s level has declined from his peak. Partly it’s just the vicissitudes of age curves and mega contracts. But can someone who’s now basically just a pure tap ruckman survive in today’s AFL? I’m not convinced Grundy is the sure bet lots of Swans fans seem to think he is.
The acquisition of Adams, meanwhile, should help patch up Sydney’s stoppage weakness. But I think that just looking at the profile of players that Sydney have brought in and assuming they’ll immediately restore them to Premiership contention rests on a flawed assumption. Football has evolved past the point where just having the best players is a near-guarantee of success. Today, successful teams marry good players with good systems. Grundy and Taylor are very different players to the ones they’ll be replacing. Their introduction will require changes to the way Sydney organise themselves. New patterns and combinations take time to bed in. They might not work right away. They might never.
Moving away from the midfield, I think there are still question marks over the Swans defence. Structurally, the back six is fine. Given how often the ball was coming inside 50, it actually held up remarkably well (Sydney conceded the third-fewest scores per entry) while still providing attacking thrust. But I suspect there’s still a slight individual talent deficit. Are Joel Hamling (who’s played six games in three years), Lewis Melican and Aaron Francis Premiership-calibre defenders? Perhaps I’m overreacting. As I said above, systems matter just as much as players. But in their defeats last year, Sydney tended to let tall and medium-sized forwards off the chain a little too often. That can be the difference between winning and losing a big final.
Given the players they’ve brought in, the Swans will be aiming for a top four finish and to then springboard into a Grand Final. But they have a difficult draw (the fifth hardest, according to Zero Hanger) and a tough first two games against Melbourne and Collingwood. It’s hard to make the top four if you’re 0-2. And even a slight stumble could be enough to get sucked into what’s poised to be a huge scrap for the top eight.
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Breakout player
An underrated issue for Sydney last year was their forward structure when Lance Franklin played. Generally speaking, it’s not a bad idea to kick it to one of the best players in history. But in 2023, Buddy was well past his best, and crowded out other forwards. Now that he’s hung up the boots, Logan McDonald is poised to emerge as the Swans’ undisputed #1 key forward. John Longmire will hope that he and the team perform well enough to resist the expected mega-bid from Fremantle. An honourable mention to the impressive Angus Sheldrick, who should see more time at stoppages.
Most important player
Errol Gulden is Sydney’s best player and probably top-ten in the AFL. Tom McCartin is a vital cog down back and his fitness and form have only grown in importance since his brother’s retirement. But my slightly unconventional (perhaps fittingly) answer is Nick Blakey. The Lizard, so-called because of his unorthodox running style (and unusual proportions? Help me out here, Swans fans), is the architect of the Swans’ run-and-gun style. His speed and kicking help set up scoring chains from deep, while his courage inspires his teammates.
Biggest question to answer
Can Sydney get the balance right in their midfield? There are no question marks about their ability to score. Few teams are a scarier proposition when running out of the front of a stoppage. But equally, few teams were as vulnerable when the opposition did.
What success looks like
Sydney’s offseason moves suggests John Longmire believes his team can win the Premiership. History suggests that’s almost impossible to do from outside the top three. So the Swans will need to manage a tough draw and a competitive-looking league to give themselves the double chance they want.
In a nutshell
With ball in hand, Sydney are one of the most devastating teams in the AFL. Without it, they’ve looked increasingly brittle over the last few years. Some astute-looking acquisitions and a clean bill of health should see them move back in the direction of the top four – and a tilt at another Grand Final.
Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against the Swans? Share your thoughts in the comments.