Drugs Are Bad Mackay?
Moderator
- May 24, 2006
- 77,300
- 151,811
- AFL Club
- Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Redbacks, Sturt, Liverpool, Arizona
- Moderator
- #1
Round 2
Sydney vs Adelaide
SCG
Saturday 12:45pm (Adelaide time)
The Crows sent shockwaves through the competition with a Round 1 upset against last season's grand final loser. The first time for 50 years that a wooden spooner has done that apparently.
The win has re-ignited the football passion in a fan base that had started to embrace gardening, women's football and spending time with family. These are now once more on the backburner and people are actually getting angry that their membership pack hasn't arrived.
Cat Ambush
In our preseason matches against Port Power we gave future opponents little to no insight as to how we planned to move the ball or how we would structure the team or anything resembling a game plan. Or basically signs of any system whatsoever. We even kept football basics like correctly spinning drop punts hidden from view, in order to give our opposition minimal information to use for planning. Instead we showed only missed tackles, fumbles and jogging. It was the game equivalent of a closed training session.
The ruse worked and Geelong certainly were unprepared for a side demonstrating even basic football competence. This trick should only work once though. The element of surprise has gone and you know what they say; fool me twice... strike three.
2-0
One of these teams will be off to a flyer. It's a marathon, not a sprint so they say. But when a team starts 2-0, 75% of the time they go onto make the finals nearly every time.
Can we afford another impressive win though? The tanking accusations from 2020 will only grow louder. If we put in a stinker we can assume that it's tactical.
Round 1's impressive display means that if we're going to tank this year we are going to have to be much more subtle about it. Obvious red flags like picking Strachan, isolating Murphy deep as a key forward and playing Seedsman as an inside mid won't be glossed over by the AFL Integrity Committee as they were last season. They've seen us play well. It will be difficult to convince them that we're actually bad and need a priority pick too please.
Coaching group
With our off-field unit still reeling from the loss of Ben Hart, it was a pleasant surprise to see a cohesive, dangerous F50 outfit on the weekend.
Elsewhere we moved the ball quickly all over the field, generated run, were able to get the ball into the hands of creative players on the outside and took risks going through the corridor. The slow, sideways chipping game was gone. The hold onto the ball for ages then hoof it high up the line to a pack was gone. The long I50 entry to an outnumbered small forward was gone. At this rate, Taylor Walker will match our 2020 leading goalkicker total by Round 3. We also have already beaten our 2020 season total of centre clearances.
In general, we played anti-Crows 2019/20 football.
Did we simply luck out by having our most plodderingest/risk-averse players all injured or gone at the same time? M Crouch, Kelly, Brown, Mackay, Talia, Hartigan traded. Or have we seen the birth of a new football game style ushered in by our new panel of coaches?
Early picks
Saturday's game should settle the debate once and for all - who is the better player out of Thilthorpe and McDonald?
Or will it? Wherefore art thou Thilthorpe? And McAsey and Jones for that matter.
When to unveil our prize draftee? Logan McDonald lit it up last week. Will we see our guy soon? Talls take longer so we need to be patient. Unfortunately at our club Smalls also take longer and Mediums take a really, really long time. The only ones who don't take long are defenders who shine early but then go back to Victoria immediately.
Rumours abound about McAsey. According to Adam Kelly, McAsey was as surprised as anyone when he read the news in the paper about him wanting out. He didn't realise that his mum would tell her hairdresser who'd tell her husband who'd tell the whole pub who'd tell their mates one of whom would eventually pass it onto a journo that he wanted to go home. In our pecking order at the moment he's stuck behind an Egyptian rookie list draftee, a supplemental list selection and the Brisbane delistee with one arm. The Crows are confident of getting a first round pick back for him though.
Chayce Jones had an inauspicious preseason following on from an even more inauspicious 2020. In fact that Bulldogs game in Ballarat is really his only auspicious moment in Crows colours. His Jason Krezja moment. The good news is that he's back working with Michael Godden now.
Fogarty didn't even make this 'early picks' segment which shows how far he's fallen.
Fortunately a few other kids are showing promising signs - Sholl, Hamill, Rowe, McHenry, Butts, Berry.
Frampton Comes Alive!
Hands up if you were irate at the Frampton > Himmelberg selection? Well big Billy at least shut us up for a week with a surprisingly tolerable display against Geelong. Though to be fair, with his two goals he actually clanged two absolute sodas, luckily having the ball lob gently back in his arms for double grab marks. Anthony Ingerson would have been proud.
Sydney
The Swans would have been more widely heralded for their Round 1 win if it weren't for us trumping them. They dispatched the Bears at Woolloongabba on the back of a 7 goals to 2 third term.
I'll be brutally honest though - I don't really know any of their players. Except Jordan Dawson. Love Rowbottom too. Both guns. Outside of that I'm pretty sure they've got a whole team of Top 10 draft picks that they got for free via their Academy plus some recruits they got through COLA (is that still a thing?). Also the AFL wants them in finals for tv ratings in NSW so they get looked after with everything. Did I read that Kurt Tippett is back in a coaching capacity? Hahahahaha. Oh, Gold Coast? That's a shame.
One week at a time
Are we reading too much into Round 1? Who else booked plane tickets for September?
Malcolm Blight: In Round 1 half the teams win, half the teams lose. Every year.
We do tend to draw long term conclusions from short term events and get ahead of ourselves a fraction when we have good/bad games. For instance Saturday's win triggered a flood of gold membership upgrades. After the second trial game I burned all my Crows clothing.
Buddy
With "calf injury" being a euphemism for pretty much any off-field scandal the PR departments around the league are wishing to downplay, mystery has surrounded the superstar forward.
But apparently he's back this week. The bad news for us is that players are usually pretty good the first game back. It's Game 2 where they look like an old man who's gone on a season too long. Like that first cricket training of the preseason; you feel pretty good, bowl ok and don't pull up too bad the next day. It's not until a couple of days later that you can't breathe without wincing and have to fold yourself out of bed in the morning.
Jordan Butts has had a tough start to 2021 with no Talia and Hawkins followed by Franklin. Our record of turning very late picks into quality defenders is something to be proud of and makes you wonder why we spend so many first rounders on them.
History
Remember these things?
Memory Lane... Crows vs Swans
Hi team, Had an idea for a weekly thread - a trip down memory lane with the subject being past matches involving our upcoming opponent. A few Crows-Swans memories have crept into some other threads and I reckon these sorts of threads could be fun. A bit of history, reliving past glories...
www.bigfooty.com
Historically our games in Sydney usually go one of two ways:
1) the Swans kick 5 goals before we have a possession and we lose heavily
OR
2) we win
Analysis
I would usually provide something in depth here about each team's structure, personnel and how the new rules have influenced their playing styles. But I can't get Kayo to cast to my tv for some reason so I haven't watched any football yet this season.
So who wins?
I think we can write off Sydney's upset win over Brisbane. Round 1 always throws up some unexpected results and you shouldn't read anything into them. Except our win of course which signaled that our rebuild was over, Nicks is a genius and we're finals bound.
Crows by 18 points
Last edited:
