AFL Adelaide v Richmond: Crows inconsistency exposed for second straight week
Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks has pleaded for patience from Crows fans after another frustrating loss to Richmond showed the inconsistencies plaguing his team.
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It has been a while since Matthew Nicks pretty much went out of his way in his post-match media conference to apologise to Adelaide supporters.
But that’s how frustrating things are right now for the Crows and their supporters after a second straight week where they showed how good and how bad they can be.
Throughout the rebuild at the Crows, well at least after the dark days of most of the 2020 season, Nicks has spoken about at the very least being able to walk off the ground and have supporters proud of what his side has left on the park.
But what would Crows fans be feeling after the 32-point loss to Richmond at Adelaide Oval on Saturday?
Perhaps optimistic Crows fans would say the red-hot third quarter in which they roared back into the match shows a potential bright future at West Lakes when the consistency comes for the young team.
Maybe the pessimistic supporters would point to yet another sustained period within a game when the Crows have looked a million miles off being a finals team and their 0-2 record to start the season.
Nicks himself conceded fans would be frustrated as what he said were massive extremes between the Crows best and worst.
“I’d say they are frustrated. I’m hoping they aren’t angry, I hope they see the potential that is there,” he said.
“Because at our best we are a very good side, I am loving the group that we have put together but we have some things that we need to work on.
“We have a fantastic group of footballers. We have talent in our group, we have some real hard nosed players and some great role players, we have a really balanced group.
“So I hope our supporters are enjoying what they are seeing when we are at our best and I apologise for the frustration that we are putting them through at this point but I’d just ask them like I have for a few years be patient.
“We want to be there as fast as they do, but we will get there.”
Nicks is usually able to put a positive spin on his post-match media conferences, or at the very least be measured in his responses.
After the loss to the Tigers you could sense the frustration when Nicks spoke.
Because it has been maddening enough to watch the Crows this year, let alone be the coach of them.
In their two games so far they have shifted between irresistible and almost unwatchable, inspired and insipid.
Crows legend and board member Mark Ricciuto said on Fox Footy at three quarter time on Saturday; “what are we going to get with Adelaide? We don’t know”.
It was an apt way of summing up just how hot and cold the Crows have been to start the season.
KICKING THEMSELVES
For the second week in a row the Crows’ poor goal-kicking cost them dearly.
Their 18 behinds against GWS last week was the equal highest in the competition.
There are still three games to go but they could be outright this week after they kicked 16 behinds against the Tigers.
And again there will be a sense of what might have been for the Crows if they were just a little more accurate.
Their roaring comeback was based on the foundations of the third quarter in which they had 24 inside 50 entries to Richmond’s seven.
But from these 24 entries the Crows added 5.8 to their score.
The usually extremely accurate Taylor Walker kicked three behinds, while Luke Pedlar and Ben Keays finished with two behinds themselves.
Nicks said the Crows would closely examine their goal kicking to try and stop these woes.
“It wasn’t just inside 50 and they were bringing it out, it was shots on goal,” he said
“We can’t hide from that.
“We will have a close look at our goal kicking, are we putting the pressure on when we have a couple of thousand of shots all across pre-season?
“Are we getting something slightly wrong in that?
“We didn’t kick straight and it cost us again.”
TRANSITION TERRORS
For the second half in a row the Crows were beaten up in the midfield battle.
In the first half the Tigers won the clearances 21-13, centre clearances 8-5 and stoppage clearances 13-8.
But it was another stat that Nicks said contributed to their loss a lot more.
The Tigers kicked 11 of their goals off turnover at Adelaide Oval.
“That can change games,” Nicks said.
“And that’s not our mids as such, I know people like to talk about the clearance numbers and the battle inside, it is that second one away from there and we were off on that today.
“At times we were off to the races thinking it was our ball when it probably wasn’t and they smacked us the other way.
At times it looked like a Crows defence, missing the dropped Jordon Butts, was at sixes and sevens in the first half.
Hawthorn legend Jason Dunstall labelled the Crows’ defending as “criminal”.
But the Adelaide defence barely stood a chance at times as the Tigers roared across the ground with ease as they capitalised on Crows turnovers.
Lynch is left all alone at the back on the pack and he makes the Crows pay.#AFLCrowsTigerspic.twitter.com/dIFsmk3LmO
— AFL (@AFL) March 25, 2023
PLAN C THROUGH...
Butts being dropped by the Crows was a surprise, especially since he has been Adelaide’s No. 1 key defender for the past two seasons.
Nicks said it was to do with team balance, with the Crows to go a bit smaller.
So then it was intriguing to see Riley Thilthorpe named as the tactical sub.
Nicks said the ideal plan to use the former No. 2 draft pick would have been towards the end of the third quarter.
He was called upon in the first quarter when Patrick Parnell was concussed by a Nathan Broad sling tackle.
Prior to then it seemed like the Crows might have been going too short in defence against Richmond’s tall trio of Tom Lynch (199cm), Jack Riewoldt (193cm) and Samson Ryan (206cm).
But when Thilthorpe came on, the Crows almost seemed a bit too tall in their forward line with Taylor Walker, Darcy Fogarty and Elliot Himmelberg starting the match in addition to ruckman Reilly O’Brien.
“It is a strange selection (Thilthorpe as the sub) because you have got Himmelberg playing that role,” Dunstall said.
Initially Thilthorpe seemed to be nearly playing an on-ball role with the 20-year-old moving all over the ground.
Maybe it was to try and stem the bleeding as the Tigers got on a run but it took just five minutes into the second quarter for Himmelberg to be sent to defence — where he remained for the rest of the game.
He had some positive moments, which might give Nicks something to think about.
“I thought Himmelberg went back and showed some flexibility… where we go with that I don’t know,” he said.
Nicks said the Crows ended up having to go with plans “c or d” after Parnell had to be subbed out of the game.
“We had a look at their forward line and with the possibilities of Ryan coming in do they go a bit taller and they expose us but they had 12 goalkickers so I don’t think they exposed us in the air,” he said.
“It was really off the intercept that hurt us.
“With Riley, in a perfect world he would have come on and impacted the game later on in the third.
“He is so versatile he can ruck, he can play forward.
“So we had a lot of plans in place and it wasn’t to be.”
While the Tigers did have 12 goalkickers, Ryan and Lynch ended up with three each and Riewoldt two in a fair day for Richmond’s tall forwards against the Crows’ undersized defence.
Nicks laments wasteful display from ‘jekyll-and-hyde’ Crows
Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks says the “extremes are just too high at the moment” for his side after the Crows showed moments of their best, and too many of their worst, for the second week in a row.
After a jekyll-and-hyde performance against GWS in Round 1 the Crows again put in a performance where they showed their best and worst football as they went down to Richmond at Adelaide Oval.
The Crows trailed by as much as 45 points at one stage in a poor first half by Nicks’ side, but were irresistible for the entirety of the third quarter and the opening exchanges of the fourth quarter as they got to within a point of the Tigers.
Nicks said he thought his side should have been able to win from that position with the momentum they had, but was left to lament the Crows’ poor first half where they conceded nine straight goals to the Tigers.
“It was self-inflicted wasn’t it,” he said.
“It was quite painful, I think we are all extremely frustrated now as we were coming into half-time.
“When you are under pressure there is a certain way you play and we had nine goals in a row kicked on us, you don’t win too many games doing that.
“You can see what we can do and you saw that in the third and in the fourth we tried some things but you are seeing both sides at this point and we have to do better when two goals or three goals are being kicked on us.
“It was three times in the game, three goals, then six goals and then ... our inability to turn that around and have that mindset in the moment of what is best for our team that is our next area of growth.”
The Crows’ side against the Tigers had four players with over 200 games experience, but no players who have played 100-200 games.
Nicks said it was a lack of consistency, rather than inexperience, that was behind the Crows’ fluctuations in the first two games of the season.
“The best sides in the competition have it and they stick to it even under pressure,” he said.
“We are still a group that is learning how to do that.
“It is frustrating for everyone, it is frustrating for our supporters because they come to the game and they watch a third quarter where it is exciting and we put our oppo under pressure and we kick 9.9 in that second half.
“And it is all there but we don’t get the job done, you can’t be off as long as we were off today.
“The second half was how we play, it was simple, it was our method. We turned the tackle count right around.
“It is a package that comes off the back of a few simple areas that we know when we get right we are really hard to play against.
“The extremes are just too high at the moment.”
The Crows lost young defender Patrick Parnell to concussion in the first quarter after he was on the end of a bad-looking sling tackle from Tiger Nathan Broad - who is set to cop a ban from the Match Review Panel for it.
“Paddy is OK,” Nicks said.
“He is in the locker room, he has a bit of a headache.”
The Crows will now turn their attention to a clash with fierce rivals Port Adelaide in the Showdown.
“I think our guys will be just chomping at the bit, so will they, which will be great,” Nicks said.
WASTEFUL CROWS PAY PRICE AGAIN TO LEAVE SEASON IN LIMBO
Warren Partland
Richmond defender Nathan Broad will face scrutiny from the AFL after his brutal tackle forced a concussed Adelaide’s Patrick Parnell out of the Adelaide Oval clash.
The three-time premiership player put himself at serious risk of suspension when he slammed Parnell to the turf in a sling tackle action midway through the first quarter.
After laying motionless just outside the boundary line, a groggy Parnell was led to the changerooms and the Crows wasted little time ruling him out of the contest.
The Tigers withstood a second-half charge from the Crows for a 32-point victory, but they are likely to confront Collingwood in the Friday night blockbuster at the MCG without Broad.
BROAD STRIFE
The AFL has been hot on concussion and Broad’s fierce tackle on Parnell means the Tigers can almost certainly plan for a red-hot Magpies without the defender.
Broad, who is 192cm, lifted the 177cm Parnell in the air and spun him around as he flung the small defender to the ground in a dangerous action.
Just a few minutes earlier, Broad nailed only the second goal of his career when he kicked the Tigers’ first for the afternoon.
The loss of Parnell meant a hardly like-for-like replacement for the Crows, with tactical sub Riley Thilthorpe being thrown into the fray. Thilthorpe is 25cm taller than his teammate.
Ryan makes his mark
Ruckman Samson Ryan failed to register a stat when he made his debut for the Tigers against St Kilda in round 15, 2021.
In first appearance since, Ryan made sure history did not repeat when he kicked the Tigers’ second goal after charging out from full forward to mark. So he joins the goal club containing players who have kicked a goal with their first kick.
He finished with three goals.
RACHELE SPARK
The Crows’ first half was a mirror image of their poor second half against GWS Giants in the opening round when they were belted in the midfield.
Contested possessions belonged to the Tigers and a dominance on the ball provided an abundance of attacking opportunities. The visitors also punished Crows’ turnovers (five of the Tigers’ first six goals came from opponent mistakes).
Not only did Rachele give the Crows a spark around the ball early in the third term, he bagged two goals. And there is no doubt he loves a celebration.
After being called to play on, he deceived a couple of opponents with clever footwork, before snapping a great goal for his second. The youngster then raced to the fence to enthusiastically celebrate with the fans.
The Crows had 23 entries inside 50 for the first half. They had 24 for the third quarter, lifting the intensity to control the midfield and cut the deficit from 45 points to 14 despite inaccuracy issues.
The margin was cut to one, before the Tigers responded.
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