The Dockers have fallen to their first defeat of the season at the SCG today with a five goal loss to an impressive Sydney Swans outfit. The Swans lead all day to run out comfortable winners, although the Dockers did move to within two points half way through the third quarter courtesy of a freakish goal by the Moose, Clive Waterhouse. That was as good as it got though for the visitors as they failed to score for the next twenty odd minutes while Sydney added seven goals of their own.

Haselby tried hard all day, as did Sandilands, our Sasquatch, who still leads the league by a streak in the hit outs category and barring injury will not be headed. Other worthy performers were; Peter Bell - despite some crucial errors, Luke McPharlin who repelled countless attacks and Matthew Pavlich who did some tremendous things at times ans then went missing for long periods, no doubt due to some close checking work by Jason Saddington.

Sydney have a stifling style of play which made for quite an ugly game for much of the first half, but when the game broke open in the third quarter it was Sydney who fared better in the shoot out. Haddrill couldn't contain the Swan's second ugliest full forward in their history who scored five goals, 2 points in an impressive display of strength against our full back, who aint a weakling.

Disappointments for the Dockers were Ben Cunningham - who came in as an emergency for Des Headland - missing two easy opportunities to goal at crucial times, Justin Longmuir, who after a flying start again went completely missing, Paul Medhurst who failed to goal for the first time against the Swans in his career, and Byron Schammer, who after an excellent game last week, failed to make an impact although this is to be expected from a young player.

The Dockers now have no teams which they have a winning record against, with the Swans moving to equalise the ledger today for a 7 all record against the Dockers. Hopefully this will be rectified in round 17.

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