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August 15, 2005
Swans Crush Lions
What more can a football fan wany. A sunny day, mixed in with a good ground and the Swans putting the Lions finals hopes though the mixer with what will go down as the Swans best win of the season so far. I must say that therefore it was worth every cent I paid to be at Telstra Stadium to witness the biggest mauling the Swans have put a team though for quite some time. The fact my brother is a Lions fan play no bearing whatsoever (well I guess a little).
From the outset it was clear that the Swans were the only team out there trying to win the match thanks to the Lions run of injuries that forced them to play without most of their tall player options in particular Jonathan Brown, a midfield that was without Simon Black and a few others that would of done a better job than the 22 that ran out at 1pm Sunday afternoon.
Still the Swans could only play the team that is in front of it and to that end did what they needed to do and they did it as well as they could of hoped for. After 3 hard fought matches in as many weeks the Swans got the easy match they needed and at the same time proved to the football world that they could take apart ANY side at ANY time.
The signs shown by the players themselves were quite impressive, in particular that of Barry Hall who for the second week running kicked a bag of goals and had a hand in a few more, this led to Magic and O'Keefe kicking goals as decoy full forward's who worked off the lack of pressure that is the result of Hall taking up defensive pressure. The midfield led by Adam Goodes, Paul Williams, Adam Schneider and Luke Ablett in particular ran riot like never before. Even the defence had an easy time with LRT putting in his best ever game and Leo and C-Bolt having easier matches than expected.
The Swans led by 50 points at halftime after opening with 11 goals first half goals to the shellshocked Lions 3. Again the Swans kicked with the accuacy that was missing early in the season and with Adam Goodes and ruckman Darren Jolly dominant in the middle things were going well. You knew how the Lions were going when they moved Bradshaw to Hall in an attempt to not only replace the injured Mal Michael but at the same time try their last roll of the dice at stopping Hall from ripping the game apart. Sadly for them, it didn't work as well as they hoped with Hall kicking 6 goals before being rested for most of the last quarter. Sydney's five-goal second term included two each from Hall and O'Loughlin.
Hall and O'Keefe each goaled in the opening five minutes of the final term before Hall and O'Loughlin were rested on the bench, however as a 100 point win looked possible the Lions flooding started to turn the match into a boring drawn out game and the crowd reacted to this with antics that have been taken out of context (ie the Mexican Wave during the stoppage in play to treat Nigel Lappin's broken leg)
Still the party had started and the Swans didnt allow any comeback from the Lions to make the score look repectable.
SYDNEY: 19.10 (124)
BRISBANE: 6.4 (40)
Goals: Hall 6 O'Loughlin 4 O'Keefe 3 Crouch, Davis, Jolly, Mathews, Kennelly, Buchanan 1.
Best Swan on Ground: Barry Hall
Posted by robbieando at August 15, 2005 06:32 PM