Shellshocked Sydney coach John Longmire was left bewildered by the struggling Swans’ complete inability to push back and defend themselves after getting punched in the face by the rampaging Power on the way to a record 112-point drubbing.
Sydney’s run of poor form hit a new low at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night where the visitors trailed by 71 points before registering a score, and managed just one goal in a diabolical first half, with the shock result making it five losses from the past six games.
It was the highest losing margin in Longmire’s decorated 14-season coaching tenure, and dropped the ladder leaders to a 14-6 record with three matches remaining before finals.
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“It’s completely and utterly unacceptable … it’s not up to standard,” Longmire said.
“We’ve been in every game this year, until last week, and today just didn’t seem like it had a baseline to it at all in any area.
“We just didn’t come to compete and that’s the very essence of the game, if you don’t come to compete and fight you get shown up, it doesn’t matter who you play.
“We’ve played three good teams in good form over the past three weeks, but you need to have a baseline and we didn’t have that tonight.
“We tried to shift players around, but in the end the very essence of trying to win the contest, to put pressure on the opposition, leads to better skills, and better everything, but we just had nothing out there.
Longmire critical of Swans lack of fight | 08:23
“That was the disappointing aspect … there’s got to be a fiercer push back than that.
“To put in a performance like that, (bewildered) would be one to describe it.”
Slow starts continue to dog the Swans, who have not won a first quarter in their past five losses and have scored just one behind combined in their past two opening terms.
“We’ve talked about it at training, we’ve tried different methods before the game, in the end we need to stop talking about it and get on with it,” Longmire said of shaking the sluggish starts.
“We’re not changing, and we’ve just got to be fiercer in the contest early in the game … it’s as simple as that.
“You have to win more 50-50 balls, if they get the ball out and it goes into the opposition forward line we’ve got to be better at stopping that and we’re not, at the moment, in first quarters.
“That’s putting us on the back foot enormously and we’ve got to be better than that.”
The Swans now face a fight to hang onto top spot, which would have been hard to foresee when they were flying high three wins clear on top of the ladder after Round 17.
Longmire denied his charges had become comfortable or complacency had set in, and remains confident his side can bounce back.
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“It’s hard, unless you’re a mind reader, to work out exactly if that’s the case, but our feeling internally is that that’s not the case,” the coach said.
“But when you see a performance like that, I’m like anyone else, you sit there and say ‘Why is that? Where did that come from?’
“Now it’s up to us to come up with a solution and we’ll work through that as a coaching group and a leadership team.
“But, as it sits tonight, it’s just absolute disappointment in our performance.
“I’m not sure where it came from, so we need to work through it and see what comes out the other side.
“We get another chance, next week, to get things right.”
