Adelaide’s Prime Time Results

[daniel_4tw]

With another loss in a marquee fixture, it’s starting to become a very worrying trend of Crows inability to perform in prime time.

And it’s been like this for awhile.

In 2025 & 2026 so far, Crows are 2W-6L in Thursday and Friday night games (25% win rate). In Saturday and Sunday games, Crows are 17W-2L (89% win rate).

Anecdotally we’ve always struggled against the big clubs (Collingwood, Geelong, Hawks etc) while seeming to get good wins against small or interstate teams (GWS, Brisbane, Saints).

Then there’s the finals. Since 2005 we are 1-7 in away finals including the grand final for a win % of 12%. Ok fine, we’d go in as underdogs in those. But home finals where we’d be favourites? We are 7-6 (54%) including some terrible, terrible losses.

The only team we’ve ever been able to beat for Gather Round has been Carlton (and thanks for AFL helping us out this year).

So it seems playing a hidden Saturday or Sunday game against an irrelevant team, we can perform, but as soon as there is a bit of pressure to perform, the team fails to rise to the occasion.

Is this a coincidence? Does the club get stage fright? How do we address it if we want to win finals?

 

[adelaidecrows]

With another loss in a marquee fixture, it’s starting to become a very worrying trend of Crows inability to perform in prime time.

And it’s been like this for awhile.

In 2025 & 2026 so far, Crows are 2W-6L in Thursday and Friday night games (25% win rate). In Saturday and Sunday games, Crows are 17W-2L (89% win rate).

Anecdotally we’ve always struggled against the big clubs (Collingwood, Geelong, Hawks etc) while seeming to get good wins against small or interstate teams (GWS, Brisbane, Saints).

Then there’s the finals. Since 2005 we are 1-7 in away finals including the grand final for a win % of 12%. Ok fine, we’d go in as underdogs in those. But home finals where we’d be favourites? We are 7-6 (54%) including some terrible, terrible losses.

The only team we’ve ever been able to beat for Gather Round has been Carlton (and thanks for AFL helping us out this year).

So it seems playing a hidden Saturday or Sunday game against an irrelevant team, we can perform, but as soon as there is a bit of pressure to perform, the team fails to rise to the occasion.

Is this a coincidence? Does the club get stage fright? How do we address it if we want to win finals?

Flat Track Bullies is basically what we are. When we play the big boys, Nicks has us go into full reactive and preemptive mode of controlling possession at all times.

 

[Moonwatcher]

With another loss in a marquee fixture, it’s starting to become a very worrying trend of Crows inability to perform in prime time.

And it’s been like this for awhile.

In 2025 & 2026 so far, Crows are 2W-6L in Thursday and Friday night games (25% win rate). In Saturday and Sunday games, Crows are 17W-2L (89% win rate).

Anecdotally we’ve always struggled against the big clubs (Collingwood, Geelong, Hawks etc) while seeming to get good wins against small or interstate teams (GWS, Brisbane, Saints).

Then there’s the finals. Since 2005 we are 1-7 in away finals including the grand final for a win % of 12%. Ok fine, we’d go in as underdogs in those. But home finals where we’d be favourites? We are 7-6 (54%) including some terrible, terrible losses.

The only team we’ve ever been able to beat for Gather Round has been Carlton (and thanks for AFL helping us out this year).

So it seems playing a hidden Saturday or Sunday game against an irrelevant team, we can perform, but as soon as there is a bit of pressure to perform, the team fails to rise to the occasion.

Is this a coincidence? Does the club get stage fright? How do we address it if we want to win finals?

We definitely tend to play teams that are better than us on Thursdays/Fridays.

 

[Moonwatcher]

But there is a significant mental hurdle on the big stage compounding that.

 

[PCORF]

We've been average in prime time games especially since moving to Adelaide Oval. I have been questioning that for many years.

Most of the losses were to Hawthorn, Essendon and Geelong. A few to other teams like Richmond.

Free to Air TV games only. This round vs Fremantle does not count. (If there are 2 Friday games in a round we often don't get Free to Air and showdowns are now rarely free to air like 20 years ago when they were often free to air. TV coverage has gone downhill since 2007.)

Essendon gets a ridiculous amount of prime time games it is not a joke. But I am enjoying Melbourne games, they often get the mid Sunday slot.

 

[ABAB]

At least we've entertained the "neutral" this year. Let's do it against Carlton as well, 3.5 quarters of shit game plan to keep the game close and then 10 minutes in the last should do it against a shit team like Carlton lol.

 

[TheLeftFist8]

Good thread. We seem to hate the big occasion. Maybe having a meek and mild coach who blows wind up the oppo in the lead-up isn't getting players into the right frame of mind to hunt victory?

On-field leaders also shoulder blame.

 

[Scorpus]

Losing on Thursday and Friday nights is as simple as us being bad and the AFL not scheduling us against weaker teams in those time slots.

It's not like we beat Geelong and Hawthorn on a Sunday but can't beat them on a Friday night. We just aren't very good against the calibre of opponents that get prime time slots

 

[SugarShane]

It goes back to 2024 as well. The year the AFL hooked us up with many prime time slots as a "whoopsie my bad" apology for the boss eyed umpire costing us finals. I mean, we were rubbish in general that year but it definitely wasn't lost on me that we begged for prime time slots and botched nearly all of them. Some of them to an embarrassing degree. We went 2-5 in 2024 in Thur/Fri games. Add that to your 25/26 stats above and it's 4-11.

Some teams rise to the occasion and thrive on it. We seem to go into deer in the headlights mode.

 

[Doctor B]

Since the start of the 2020 season, We've played 135 games.

Over half of our wins, 30 of our 56 wins, have been against only 5 teams in 42 games.

Our winning percentage against the 12 other sides is diabolical.

 

[Scorpus]

Since the start of the 2020 season, We've played 135 games.

Over half of our wins, 30 of our 56 wins, have been against only 5 teams in 42 games.

Our winning percentage against the 12 other sides is diabolical.

Yep, they're not going to give us a Friday night game against West Coast or North Melbourne

 

[CrowToon]

Probably a bit of Friday was mental given the results of the previous two weeks.

Would love to know who in the side in those last 10 mins thought we would win vs who thought the inevitable was coming.