Red & White Tears Stain My Swan’s Scarf In 2025
What a crap footy season it has been! If you bleed red and white in the AFL it has been an annus horribilis. The Giant defeat to end slim final hopes left a bitter taste in my mouth. Sydney Swans halftime heroes and full time failures. Indeed, red and white tears stain my Swan’s scarf in 2025. Not even the return of Errol Gulden could turn this season around. Isaac Heeney’s Colgate smile, similarly, could not breathe enough fresh confidence into a losing campaign. Even the bloody Red Cross weren’t able to transfuse life into an injury riddled Dean Cox debut season as head coach.
Sydney Swan’s Floundering Footy Year Stained With Failures
We supporters are unused to the view from the bottom half of the AFL ladder. A couple of decades of unrelenting success will do that. Red and white is usually associated with victory. This year was an anomaly, an aberration. Do you hear me Dean Cox? Swans will rise above them all. There are, however, no guarantees in football or life. We need some new talent. Sydney requires an injection of something that is lacking from the current squad. Brute strength and a little bit of nasty.
Too Much White & Not Enough Blood Red Ever since the ‘no dickhead’s’ policy of Paul Roos, back in the day (which was wise at the time), things have gone a little too far in that virtuous direction. Football sides are made up of a variety of human beings and this needs to be respected. Sure, it might be easier to homogenise the team but every footy club culture requires the balance of all sorts playing with what they uniquely bring to the mission. The current Swan’s squad lacks that bit of bastardry. The savage animal thinly disguised in a footy jumper. There are too many clean skins living within the Sydney AFL side. Too much white and not enough blood red in the current identity. The old Paul Roo’s blue collar midfield ethos no longer exists to the detriment of the team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTDm6MT-hw&t=343s Swans Recruit Some Hard Men, Please Sydney Swans need to recruit some brute force, enforcer type AFL players to bolster the thin ranks in this regard. Finals and big games are won with hard men playing their hearts out. Lightweights will not get it done on the last day in September, as we have seen repeatedly. No matter how darn clever and talented these boys might be. It takes real grit in the trenches. 4 quarter efforts week in week out – all qualities missing in 2025. I don’t know if Dean Cox has got what it takes – we will have to wait and see. He requires the cattle to get the job done, however, and the paddock looks bare right now in this regard. Too many red and white tears stain my Swan’s scarf in 2025. On Their Way Out & Injury Prone Dane Rampe, Harry Cunningham, Jake Lloyd, Robbie Fox, Taylor Adams, and Joel Hamling are all on their way out. Age shall weary them. One more season at tops for any of them. Joel Amartey is, unfortunately, injury prone, as is Tom Papley in season 2025. Lewis Melican has been iffy in this regard over the journey too. Hopefully, Logan McDonald is going to come back strongly in 2026. Similarly, Callum Mills has missed much of the last 18 months and is a watch as to whether his body stands up going forward. These 10 players and their fates create plenty of room on the list for fresh blood to be injected into the Swan’s list. “SYDNEY coach Dean Cox has admitted the future of champion defender Dane Rampe remains up in the air as the Swans start to plan for 2026 and beyond. Rampe, 35, is out of contract at season's end and is hopeful of playing on for a 14th year, but his coach stopped short of providing those assurances ahead of the clash with Essendon on Saturday at the SCG.” - (https://www.afl.com.au/news/1377239/veteran-dane-rampes-future-unclear-as-sydney-swans-coach-dean-cox-plans-for-2026-and-beyond) Bigger Bodies & Snarling Types, Please There are some wonderful AFL players on the Sydney list, but they require something extra in the form of big blokes with deadly intentions. Enough of the Peter Pan let’s see some mongrel! Can we get a big bodied, fast, mature age recruit or two to fill the absence of grit? I, for one, am sick of seeing Swans run over by bigger and more determined opponents. The culture will need to change a bit to accommodate these requirements. If we are serious about ever winning another premiership, this is what it will take! “Halftime heroes and full time failures, the Sydney Swans turn toes up once again in Giant defeat. I don’t know what coach Dean Cox serves up at the halftime break but it might have been a lullaby because his players fell asleep. The GWS, well down after the first half of football at their home ground, came out post the long break and destroyed Sydney. Winning contests and running amok to kick multiple unanswered goals. Chad Warner was nowhere to be seen nor Isaac Heeney in that third quarter demolition. It reminded me of the game against the Gold Coast earlier in the year with a similar awful result for the Swans.” - (https://www.golfdom.com.au/swans-turn-toes-up-once-again-in-giant-defeat/) Too many red and white tears stain my Swan’s scarf in 2025. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of The Stoic Golfer; Money Matters and America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©GolfDom
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