Swans midfielder Chad Warner cannot remember the last time he enjoyed his job so much. The reason? An “organised chaos” game plan under coach Dean Cox.
The Swans remain top of the ladder going into Friday night’s clash against Collingwood at the SCG, and are there courtesy of a high-risk brand of football. No other team turns the ball over more than Sydney, but none forces more turnovers from the opposition – or scores as often from them.
“The end result is just organised chaos for us, but it’s organised chaos that works,” Warner said. “I think that was probably the one thing that Coxy brought in at the start of this year. He said, ‘We’re going to have to accept that we’re going to make a lot of mistakes, but it’s how we clean them up’.
“Our whole game plan is around how you clean up your mistakes in a turnover-to-turnover game … we want to create as many turnovers from the opposition as we can, and then clean them up ourselves.”
The Swans have won eight games and lost one this year, but Warner is aware of the lessons from 2024, when the team made a flying start before stuttering towards the end of the season and losing the grand final.
“I think with how we’re going and the way that we’re playing, too, and the way that we’re winning, it’s a really fun brand of football,” Warner said.
“The hardest part now is just to find ways to keep it going. You find that in the past – no team, no matter how good you are, is able to perform at the level we are for the whole season.
“We’ve got to find ways to mitigate how bad our dips are, and then we also got to work out how to get around when teams are doing different things against us, because that’ll start to happen a lot.”
Collingwood lead the AFL in pressure acts of the sort that can upset the Swans’ smooth running handball game, but Warner believes that in teammate Malcolm Rosas Jr they have the perfect antidote: a forward who loves to tackle opposition defenders.
Rosas Jr kicked a career-high seven goals against Melbourne at the start of May, but is best known at the Swans for his selfless forward pressure, averaging over three tackles a game.
“He’s just a ball of joy, really; he just smiles, and he’s fun to be around,” Warner said. “When he first came here to the Swans, all he wanted to do was make the team better. He just came and said, I just want to tackle, play the role for the team and make you guys look better and he’s doing that 100 per cent but also looking good himself.”
Rosas Jr will play Sir Doug Nicholls Round at the SCG in front of his mother who has travelled down especially from Darwin to watch him. The Sydney forward will also think about his grandmother Eileen Cummings, who continues to work as a renowned indigenous leader in the NT.
“I think my grandmother’s been a big part of my life, she’s been my hero growing up, she’s been someone I can always talk to and be there for me,” Rosas Jr said.
“Even though I’m away from home a lot, she’s always one call away or a message away, she’s had a big impact on the Northern Territory and she plays a good role in that. She’s a good role model, I think, for a lot of young people.”
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