A Horse with no game? The big questions the Swans must tackle

No team reaches September without picking up a few bumps and bruises along the way. But just like in 2022, when the selection of an obviously injured Sam Reid backfired badly on the Swans in their 81-point loss to Geelong, another dice-roll on a hampered key forward resulted in snake eyes for Sydney.

A long, hard summer of introspection awaits for the Sydney Swans after their 60-point thrashing at the MCG on Saturday . These are the areas the football club must review as they pick apart the carcass of another grand final embarrassment.

To lose one grand final by 10 goals (or more) is bad enough. To lose two in three years? Unacceptable and deeply troubling.

Logan McDonald was the player overlooked for Reid in the grand final two years ago. This time, he came into the week with a sprained ankle, which he rolled against Port Adelaide in their preliminary final. He never looked right and was clearly limping from the first bounce. After one possession in two quarters of football, he was subbed off just after half-time. The Swans said he’d proven his fitness during the week and John Longmire stood by the decision to select him post-match, but they didn’t learn from their mistakes.

Logan McDonald goes to the bench during Sydney’s preliminary final win. Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images

It’s always hard to judge these things without the all information, which only the Swans’ coaching and medical staff will have, but someone has to be held accountable. They made the right call with Callum Mills (we presume), but the wrong one with McDonald. Why?

And then there’s Isaac Heeney, who revealed after the game that he had been playing through a stress fracture in his ankle for the whole finals series. It obviously didn’t bother him in their other finals, but when he took a hit to the ankle in a tackle towards the end of the first quarter on Saturday, it flared up, and he spent almost the entire final term on the bench.

That might be pure bad luck – maybe he would have seen out the game if that hit didn’t happen, maybe he would have gathered more than 14 possessions – but the reality is he has struggled in two grand finals now. Meanwhile, Brisbane star Lachie Neale was also carrying a heel problem and needed pain-killing injections to play for the past month, and said he felt something “snap” late in the game. He finished second in the Norm Smith Medal voting.

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