Welcome to the fifth edition of the Shinboner Finals Dossiers. For new readers, the aim is to comprehensively profile each of the top four* teams.
This year’s format is a little different to previous editions, thanks to new Patreon features. Firstly we’ll start with a look at how the team has evolved from week to week with the Team Structures tool.
Then it’s a look at how each team beats you, followed by the opposite: how you beat this team. There’s a section titled ‘the narrative’, aka what to watch out for in potential matchups and locations, before finishing up with ‘in a sentence’.
Today we look at the minor premiers and the undisputed best team for most of the season: Sydney.
(*and then get annoyed when one of them goes out in straight sets, as has happened three of the previous four times I’ve completed this exercise)
Sometimes when a team is so far out in front of everyone else to start a season, every move they make is scrutinised to the highest degree.
The comparisons between Sydney 2024 and Essendon 2000 at one point were hilarious and probably played a part in the recent overcorrection when the natural form blip arrived.
But that start to the season did allow teams to get to work on what does and doesn’t handicap Sydney’s style.
As a result we have a clearly defined set of strengths and weaknesses for Sydney to this point.
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The Evolution Of Sydney
A normal disclaimer for this: It’s naturally not going to be 100 percent correct; there’ll be a couple of minor points missed, along with getting the right balance between primary mid + secondary forward or vice versa. Ultimately it’s me saying this has all been done manually by one person all season and to go easy when pointing out what’s been missed.
How good is stability?
With the one exception of Logan McDonald playing back in Round 22, the AFL version of a polar bear in Arlington, Texas.
Nevertheless, at the start of the year everyone – especially me – was prepared to spend multiple weeks figuring out all Sydney’s potential midfield and forward combinations.
Then, thanks to a pristine injury run, the only changes in the first two thirds of the season were around the margins.
They’ve found a spot for Luke Parker since his return, alternating between forward and on-ball where needed. Meanwhile Callum Mills had been bouncing around a little bit until the last fortnight before finding a spot at half back, pushing Ollie Florent to the wing.
Imagining Tom Papley, Justin McInerney, Tom McCartin, and Isaac Heeney return for the first week of finals, you’d imagine Caiden Cleary, Aaron Francis, and Robbie Fox are three of the four to make way from Sydney’s Round 24 team. A braver person than me can try to figure out the fourth change, but once it’s done they’ll be at full strength.
How Sydney Beat You
While it doesn’t start and finish with ball movement, it definitely starts there.
Each of the top four teams have their own style of ball movement. Where Sydney differs from the other three is how they try to break the first layer of defence as directly as possible while maintaining control.
It stands apart from GWS’ run and carry, Geelong using the open space provided, and Port Adelaide’s single-mindedness to go corridor, corridor, and then corridor again and live with the consequences.
For Sydney it’s not necessarily about engaging the deepest line of defence and coming in behind it to lock the ball in the front half, but rather continually breaking the first line again and again until they get into a dangerous area.
Take this passage of play for instance. After Ollie Florent takes an intercept mark at half back, he breaks the first layer of Geelong defence to find Sam Wicks. And then as Wicks looks for his next option, multiple teammates present short again.
As Gulden gets it, suddenly Sydney are in a position for a deep inside 50 entry, all without engaging half of Geelong’s defence. Although Gulden’s kick (on his right foot!) is a little rushed, the passage is an illustration of the process Sydney look for.
Here’s another smaller example v GWS. Instead of the long dump kick from slow play, it’s two short kicks to get past the higher part of the defence and reach the edge of 50:
Because by definition, if you break the first layer of defence continually, there’ll eventually be fewer defenders to engage deep.
It’s the bedrock of their game but perhaps in all the talk around Sydney’s ball movement, what’s gone a touch under the radar is their work from stoppages.
No team scores at a more efficient rate from their clearance wins, and only the Bulldogs have scored more total points from the source this year.
It’s come in especially handy over the last third of the season as opponents have got to work figuring out how to stop Sydney’s ball movement:
| Score Sources R16-23* | Points from stoppages diff | Points from turnover diff |
| Sydney | +67 | -120 |
| AFL rank | 4th | 16th |
Technically it’s not the ‘correct’ thing to do, but those who watched the game … you know what I mean.
While part of those turnover numbers are slightly skewed by the thumping at Port Adelaide’s hands, the continuity amongst Sydney’s on-ballers has proved arguably the most important part of their season.
Brodie Grundy’s addition has been instrumental, along with Isaac Heeney taking the leap after his long-awaited midfield move. Under Grundy, the quartet of Heeney, Chad Warner, James Rowbottom, and Errol Gulden – the latter spending more and more time on-ball in recent weeks – rotate seamlessly between roles, the key to making it all work.
Some teams have clear focuses at stoppages, when one midfielder is the target more often than not and others work around him. For example at the Giants, the Kieren Briggs-Tom Green combination dwarfs anyone else.
At Sydney it’s an extremely even spread between Grundy and any of Heeney, Warner, Rowbottom, or Gulden. It makes stoppages so tough to defend for opponents simply because there are so many reads they have to make.
Will Heeney be the focus? Maybe it’s Warner coming through the stoppage at pace? It could be Gulden coming from outside to inside, or even Rowbottom to change things up? It’s almost information and movement overload for opponents and if they’re not on the same page they get punished by Swans:
Of course all the above doesn’t imply Sydney’s defence is just there for decoration. But the combination of precise ball movement and work around contests is what allows their defence to start from a position of strength more often than not.
No team is better than the Swans at preventing opposition rebound 50s turning into inside 50s, both in total entries and then scoring shots once in there.
It’s off the back of offence, but if that offence is shut down we start to see some openings…
How You Beat Sydney
The blueprint opposition teams have settled on revolves around owning possession – partly for offensive purposes, but more importantly for defensive purposes.
A look through each of Sydney’s six losses shows an emphasis on marking the ball and keeping it out of the Swans’ hands as much as possible (with the exception of the Bulldogs game, where they were monstered around the contest):
| Opponents’ Marks Tally | v Sydney | Season Average |
| Richmond (Round 3) | 110 | 84.7 |
| Fremantle (Round 16) | 105 | 94.0 |
| St Kilda (Round 17) | 126 | 104.3 |
| Brisbane (Round 19) | 116 | 110.5 |
| Western Bulldogs (Round 20) | 98 | 99.8 |
| Port Adelaide (Round 21) | 126 | 98.5 |
Because Sydney are such a corridor focused team – ranking second for corridor use from their rebound 50s andthird for general midfield ball movement– opponents owning possession like this allows them to set up defensively to stop Sydney’s preferred movement when they do get the ball back.
It leaves Sydney with a choice:
a) Keep trying to take risks through the middle in an area now populated more than normal
b) Depart from their preference and take the long way around
Half the battle for opponents is forcing Swans into two minds on which choice to take. When a team is so potent with ball movement, simply slowing them down has its benefits.
This 50 seconds from the Port Adelaide game is perhaps the best available clip to illustrate what happens when a team is defending Sydney well in general play. To the video:
While the Port game was a bit of an outlier in terms of how well the Power played and how poor the Swans were, it’s the ultimate, best case scenario blueprint for a lot of teams.
When that ball movement is shut down through opposition defence – both in and out of possession as covered above – Sydney get stuck a little more than other finals teams. Naturally teams are going to struggle to maintain territory when they’re second best, says Captain Obvious over here, but the point is the Swans are even at the bottom end of that:
| 2024 finalists averages | Time in forward half (losses) |
| Western Bulldogs | +3 minutes 39 seconds |
| Brisbane | +3 minutes 18 seconds |
| Port Adelaide | -1 minute |
| Hawthorn | -2 minutes 52 seconds |
| Geelong | -3 minutes 36 seconds |
| GWS | -6 minutes 29 seconds |
| Carlton | -6 minutes 35 seconds |
| Sydney | -7 minutes 23 seconds |
But even when teams do manage to shut down Sydney’s ball movement, the difference between this year’s Swans and the 2022/2023 version is the Swans still have their midfield and contest up and running nearly every week.
And it will come into play depending on their matchups…
The Narrative: Sydney v The Field
Given Sydney’s clear strengths – and how opponents have set up to play them – it’s a clearer picture than most to forecast their route through September.
For instance, Geelong’s team system may be able to thwart Sydney’s ball movement, but you’d expect Heeney, Warner and co to overpower the Cats’ midfield options at the contest.
A similar situation has happened in Sydney’s two wins over GWS, their midfield overwhelming the Giants’.
Also, the owning possession aspect touched on earlier is perhaps another reason why the Giants have struggled in this year’s meetings. Their time with the ball isn’t necessarily used to set up defensively, instead preferring to go at teams.
It partly explains why Sydney have enjoyed the matchup, able to thwart the GWS movement and then go straight back at an unsettled defence: a 10 out of 13 goal stretch at the SCG followed by 10 consecutive majors at whatever the Showgrounds is currently called.
Port Adelaide are the fascinating one. Given the Power’s well documented recent finals struggles, the assumption is Sydney would handle the test fairly easily.
But Port have won their last eight against Sydney, capped by the 112-point thumping just a few weeks ago. If you were to design a team in a lab perfectly suited to counter all of Sydney’s strengths, it would be this Port Adelaide unit.
Their team defence already has a corridor slant more often than not (sometimes to their detriment against other sides, but I digress), their midfield is capable of beating any, and most of their individual flaws aren’t in positions Sydney set up to exploit, although Dan Houston’s absence and potentially Kane Farrell as well changes things slightly.
It may be the head-to-head battle I’m most keen to watch in September, although to eventuate it needs a few dominos to fall.
In A Sentence
How high you are on Sydney’s chances depends on your confidence on two things; whether their ball movement holds up under finals pressure, and if it doesn’t, whether their midfield and contest game can pick up the slack.
As it stands they’re my clear premiership favourites.