Encouraged Coach Won't Rush Hall's Return
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday July 2, 2007
SYDNEY are likely to name Barry Hall in their line-up to take on Fremantle on Sunday at the SCG, but a final decision on whether he will return from his groin injury won't be made until Friday's final training session.
Against Geelong on Saturday, the Swans played without Hall for the first time in 113 matches and coach Paul Roos admitted he saw some positives from his forwards in Hall's absence, a factor which will be helpful when the co-captain makes his return."We'll monitor 'Hally' all week and whether he plays next weekend or not will probably come down to seeing how he's running and then how he trains next Friday, and then we'll make a decision," Roos said yesterday."It took us a while to work it out [how to play without having Hall as the focal point in the forward line] but once we did, it probably made us less predictable and we used the ball really well in the second half and looked certainly as dangerous as what we've done at any time in the last month or so."So I think it does give us a few options when Hally comes back into the team. We saw Mick O'Loughlin up the ground yesterday and I thought he played really well, then he pushed back and took a mark in the last quarter. 'Davo' [Nick Davis] was up the ground and also out of the goal square, and Ryan O'Keefe kicked a couple of goals."I think what it does do is allow us, if we do play Hally in a different role or rotate him off the bench, to do it with a lot more confidence, considering that we have now been able to do it successfully."On Saturday we did it [had the forward line working well without Hall] against the best team in the competition and in trying conditions, so you'd like to think the rest of the season could go reasonably well if we adopt the same approach."While losing Hall leaves a massive hole in their forward line, midfielder Nick Malceski agreed with Roos that it made the Swans less predictable. "We still had a lot of options up there and I guess it was good for us knowing that Hally is coming back in this week," Malceski said. "But we know we don't have to go for him, we know we've got other forwards that can step up."I guess we've been really predictable in that sort of way. We know Hally is our main forward and we're just going to him all the time and other teams know we're going to do it. So after not having him in there for the weekend, we now know this week we've got other options."Roos described Sydney's performance in the second half as their best for some time. While they had kicked only two goals in the first half, and trailed by 41 points at the long break, he didn't think they were that bad."Our ball use was a lot better and ironically in the wet we probably used the ball in the second half as well as we have for a month or so," Roos said. "We came back and I genuinely thought we were a chance to win, unlike the week before [against Collingwood] when I didn't think we were any chance to win at any stage."It's a tough place to win down there [Skilled Stadium] when you've got all your players fit and healthy, so hopefully we take some real confidence out of that into next week."Roos added there was a "slight chance" Tadhg Kennelly could be ready to return from injury this week as well.
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald