I have been asked to write a piece on why the Sydney Swans lost the AFL Grand Final in 2024. The person who asked me to do this (who asked to remain anonymous), couldn't work out in the heat of the moment why a team which went 17 and 6 during the regular season, should biff it so badly and lose by ten goals in the big dance on that one day in September. Seemingly there is no sensible description as to why a team which won the minor premiership, should splutter so badly when it mattered. On paper, this should have been a relatively easy victory for Sydney but football matches are not won on paper but rather, in a place with thirty-six players, green grass, and a football.
Probably the best way to view this match is to look at the relative formations of the two sides. Sydney nominally played a 6-6-6 formation, with 6 players the back, 6 in the middle, and 6 up front. Brisbane on the other hand, tended to play 8-5-5, with 8 behind, and 5 in the middle and up front. This makes some kind of sense in a big match like the Grand Final as a defensive outlook is generally how a scoreline like this eventuates. 120 is not an overly large winning scoreline but 60 is a scoreline which demonstrates either failure to convert possession into points or what happened here, failure to gain meaningful possession. Suffice to say, this match was more or less won in the first half.
The opening ten minutes were dour. No major score happened at all until Will Hayward opened the account for Sydney, then another goal by Tom Papley drew the lead out further; before Kai Lohmann scored two goals for Brisbane; wherein they took the lead and never ever relinquished it. It was the second quarter where Brisbane really put the boot on the throat of Sydney and chocked them into submission, and a comparison of the scores at the end of the first and second quarter bears this out.
Q1: Syd 3.1.19 - Bri 4.3.27
Q2: Syd 4.3.27 - Bri 11.7.73
One goal either way at the end of the First Quarter is not even remotely interesting. However, 7 unreplied goals in a quarter is the kind of thing which breaks a team's spirit and where the half-time break can not come fast enough. This is the kind of scoreline where you go into the dressing sheds wishing for lighting so that the game is cancelled. 46 points is also bigger than the largest margin that any side has come back from in the entire history of the Grand Final; so unless God himself is handing out miracles (which is unlikely as he doesn't even give the Saints any), then you may as well start tying maroon ribbons to the handles of the Premiership Cup there and then. The postcode of the address to mail the pennant to, already begins with a 4.
So what went wrong that Sydney should score but 1 goal to Brisbane's 7 in a quarter? Mostly formation.
I do not care if you are playing Australian Rules, or Association Football, or Cricket, or Field Hockey, et cetera, or any sport which takes place on a very big field, games are very much determined by how well you manage both personnel and space. This does not apply to basketball where the field is small, or netball where the positions are tightly bound in defined bound boxes, or Rugby League or Rugby Union where the scope of space management is very tightly limited by the shape of active play. Australian Rules Football which is played on a massive field and with a very very loose ruleset surrounding what is offside, is such that to the untrained eye it appears that players are free to go where they please; and it is this where Brisbane absolutely excelled where Sydney did not.
Remember at the beginning of this how I suggested that Brisbane tended to play 8-5-5, with 8 behind. That meant that in addition to the nominal 6 players that a team would logically play if they were playing with a balanced set up, that Brisbane had two extra players in their own fifty, most of the time. This meant that Sydney when they did push forward, tended to find contests for the ball where they were outmanned. Having 30% extra manpower to win possession in your own half, meant that even though Brisbane sacrificed players in the midfield and up front, they could win possession more easily when Sydney did foray forward.
This meant that Sydney had a choice. Should they commit players forward to meet the markups where they were outmanned, or should they make use of the extra player in the midfield and up front when Brisbane did push forward? This choice, is one which tactically gets more desperate when a side goes behind on points because of the dilemma that in order to score points, you need people up front to be able to win the ball in a useful position to be able to do so. When Sydney did decide to commit players forward, this created space and loose men in the midfield for Brisbane, who after winning the ball across the half-back line, played the ball forward through very limited corridors up the ground.
The third quarter of the match which had the score blow out to 73 points, was simply more of the same. Again this was not about Brisbane trying to win the football up front, but choking out any and all opportunity for Sydney to score anything. In that third quarter, Sydney scored just 1.1.7; which in any match of footy is corpsing. Granted that they were allowed to breathe a little bit in the fourth quarter and they scored four goals, but had they done that then the scores would have both ended up at about 16 goals and change; which is both at about 100.
This match was not won because Brisbane were an amazing attacking side who kicked out and handpassed everywhere. Neither was this match about Brisbane restricting Sydney's repeatedly proven ability to play wide which they do at home very well. This match was won by Zorko, Answerth, Lester, Wilmot, Payne, Fletcher and Dunkley, all led by Harris Andrews who stood at the back directing traffic and trying to make sure that nothing got past him without written permission.
Sydney's top goal scorer for 2024, Joel Amartey, got nothing in the final. Sydney's second top goal scorer for 2024, Logan McDonald Sydney's third goal scorer for 2024, Tom Papley, got one goal in the final, right at the beginning and never really even saw the ball ever again.
This is the point on which the match hinged. Brisbane winning a contest in their own fifty, then never allowing Sydney forward. That's where the match was won. You can not score if you don't have the ball. You can not win the ball if you're outgunned and outmanned, outnumbered and outplanned, in every contest. As Sydney were committed forward, there was consistently little organised defence out back because you can not be in two places at once.
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