I was thinking about this because on Saturday, Collingwood takes on Sydney at ANZ Stadium. This year, Collingwood is above the Swans, but for the last few years, that hasn't been the case. Yet Collingwood has consistently won their clashes.
In fact, the Swans haven't beaten the Pies since round 13, 2005. They did, however, win a flag and miss another by less than a goal in that time.
With that record, a bit of it is mental, but I reckon it's mostly the game styles that determine these things - some teams just come up better against others.
As an example, you look at North Melbourne against Adelaide last week, and my boys were never going to win. Their game style just doesn't suit, and I reckon it's years since we beat them.
It wouldn't be a mental issue for the younger Swans players, but the older players would be going: "Oh no, we're coming up against Collingwood again. Bloody hell, we never match up well against them".
Then it becomes mental as well.
But the most decisive factor is the actual game style that Collingwood plays just flat-out works against Sydney.
As a result, it's pretty hard to turn that around, and Roosy hasn't really changed his game style since he's started - he's one of those coaches that I like, where you have a game plan and you stick to it with just a few tweaks here and there.
And when it's won you a flag, you naturally stick with it, but the game evolves so much, you've got to change with it.
This weekend, I think the Sydney Swans need to flip that on its head and do the opposite to their usual plan - just go all-out attack. And I reckon they are capable of doing that - I'm sure if you said to them before the game: 'For the first term, whatever happens, I just want you to play on all the time, link up with handball, take them on - if you get caught, I don't care, just create, we'll try and catch them out with something different', I reckon the Swans players would think: 'Beautiful, something different! This is going to be great, I'm going to take them on.'
Coming back to Adelaide-North, I don't think we changed our game style at all - we just kept doing the same thing over and over again, and, no surprises, we kept getting the same result - the old definition of insanity.
I remember years ago, we had the most basic gameplan going around - get it and kick it long to Wayne Carey. We'd just move it on as quickly as we could. Then one night against Essendon, who had beaten us a couple of times, (North coach) Denis (Pagan) told us to do the complete opposite for the first quarter - just hold it up, move it sideways, hang onto it.
That's what we did, and it was something of a stalemate for the first 30 minutes, but after that we got on top and won the game. The value of trying something different.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
