GUT feel versus statistics. As coaches, we use a combination of tools to teach and instruct the team every week.
We came away from the loss against Hawthorn feeling reasonably positive because we achieved some of our key performance indicators that had been way down during the previous three defeats.
They showed that the effort was definitely back, and then it carried through to the game against Essendon, where we got a little bit more right to enable us to get over the line by nine points in a tense last term.
After three weeks of poor form, when we lost to Geelong, the Western Bulldogs and Fremantle, as coaches we really had to try to drill down to make sure we were on top of what was the problem.
One of the problems related to our lack of run and attacking drive from defence. We could observe the players weren’t running hard enough, and then the statistics backed that up.
Attacking drive from the back half of the ground is our strength, but during our losses that dried up. During our run of five wins in a row, we had been scoring an average of 23 points a game from defensive 50 rebound, but during our run of losses, that dropped to an average of just five points.
It was another piece of ammunition we could feed to the group to show where we’d dropped off.
For example, against Fremantle we got only two points from defensive 50m rebound, but the last two weeks we have bounced back to 19 against Hawthorn and then 20 points against Essendon.
It gets back to run, and if our players are not running hard enough we are more likely to have big scores kicked against us, and are less likely to win.
So statistics such as that play a key role in coaching. Each area of the ground - defence, midfield and attack - has a couple of key indicators, and we know if we achieve these we are likely to win.
For example, one of the defensive benchmarks showed that if we had more than a certain number of goals kicked against us, we had won just two out of 30 games when that had happened.
So the stats come in handy to back up your gut feel. They help you coach, but you have to rely mostly on what you see and what you feel.
My gut feel after the game against Essendon on Sunday was that the effort was there.
A real strength of our team is our ability to restrict our opponents, to work hard off the ball, and hopefully against Port this Saturday we get that, but also our attack and our conversion can improve.
On a big ground like AAMI Stadium, where you have more space to lead and pass, that should help, but we certainly need to get more efficient with our scoring from our kicks into our forwards.
I was looking at the ladder at the halfway mark and I believe it basically reflects where every team is at. Most clubs probably feel as though they could be going a bit better but if you look across the board, clearly Geelong and Collingwood have been the most consistent teams.
At the Swans we’d like to have maintained our early season form but if you base it on injuries and the strength of the competition, we are sitting roughly where we deserve to be, and the same goes for teams like Carlton and Essendon who have had some strong performances and some poor ones.
And hopefully we can start getting a few more senior players back from injury after the split round, with Tadhg probably back this week, and Ben McGlynn, and then Daniel Bradshaw after the bye.
On the positive side, we’ve had a real surprise packet in big Shane Mumford. He is making a significant impact on the team in his first year here. Some ruckmen are good at the ruck and spreading forward and being dangerous marking in space, like Dean Cox at West Coast, whereas Mummy is dangerous as an extra good-sized midfielder once the ball hits the ground. He must be becoming a crowd favourite so we hope he has a really big second half of the season.
