Injection of Wayne Milera, Brodie Smith and Rory Atkins into Crows midfield rights balance
The injection of Wayne Milera, Brodie Smith and Rory Atkins into the Crows midfield shows coach Don Pyke has learnt a lesson about getting the balance right, Mark Bickley writes.
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Forget the scoreboard. Forget the opposition. Forget the return to form of some of Adelaide’s stars.
The most notable thing about the Crows’ win was the change in philosophy and the personnel that played through the midfield on Saturday night.
Adelaide has long held the notion that contested ball is king and have constructed a midfield unit as good as any at hunting the Sherrin. Rory Sloane, Matt and Brad Crouch, Hugh Greenwood and, more recently, Cam Ellis-Yolmen use their strong frames to win the ball and get it forward, but not always with the ease or effectiveness of some of their elite opponents.
When you have a natural instinct to win the ball like these players, you can be drawn to the ball even though one of your team-mates might already be in there trying to win it.
Having extra numbers on the inside of the contest generally means free opposition players on the outside.
The “see ball, get ball” mentality, as honourable as it sounds, can be a football team’s undoing — as it was for the Crows against Geelong when the Cats nullified Adelaide’s inside contested work and then ran rings around them once the ball flipped outside of the congestion.
Don Pyke, in his post-game press conference, described it as “bees around a honey pot”. A week later against Port Adelaide and it was a similar story — the Crows matching the Power in the contest but being blown away on the outside.
The run and spread of Port Adelaide allowed them to amass 303 uncontested possessions for the afternoon — a staggering 104 more than the Crows.
Cleary it was time for a new approach, and we saw it on the Gold Coast on Saturday night.
The most obvious choice to address this imbalance was Wayne Milera. Used sparingly through the middle in his short career, his performance against the Suns demands that Adelaide play him there for the rest of the season.
Milera has to become the smooth-moving, silky-skilled, hard-running midfielder that the Crows have been missing for some time.
Brodie Smith was another new face through the middle, and not before time. He is by far Adelaide’s most penetrating player and has become a target for opposition teams when stationed at half-back.
The opposition have used a defensive forward to pressure him and drag him out of the play, thus limiting his effectiveness. By releasing him into the midfield it frees him up, and as we saw on the weekend his run and long, penetrating kicks get the ball to the forwards before the opposition’s extra numbers arrive.
Rory Atkins was the third inclusion into the stoppage mix and while he was high among Adelaide’s best on Saturday, his challenge will be when the pressure rises, getting the balance right between taking the opposition on and kicking the ball forward.
His use by foot can be elite and he also has the ability to hit the scoreboard, something the Crows lack with their midfielders.
These three players all have something in common — they are runners, and they are kickers.
By runners, I mean they can cover the ground, spreading from the contest to assist defence or creating options in attack. And by kickers I mean they instinctively want to get ball to boot as opposed to many of the Crows’ other midfielders, who have a tendency to want to handball. Milera, Smith and Atkins combined for 56 kicks and 30 handballs on the weekend, compared with Sloane, Crouch and Crouch who racked up almost the opposite, 29 kicks and 58 handballs.
Excessive handballing in close invites pressure and often happens to Adelaide when teams get at them with speed, creating turnovers.
So why has it taken until Round 17 for Adelaide to introduce this style of player into the mix? Quite simply because contested ball, particularly clearances, is such an important component to winning and the Crouch brothers, Sloane, Ellis-Yolmen and Greenwood are the best at it.
So while Milera, Smith and Atkins bring a specific skill set, there will also be moments when they will be outpointed, because they will come up against the elite clearance players of the competition.
I think there is enough upside to take that risk.
The sight of Sloane, Crouch and Crouch at most centre bounces might become a thing of the past if coach Don Pyke sticks to this new strategy. It might also be the lifeline Bryce Gibbs has been waiting for, as he is another player — like Smith, Atkins and Milera — who doesn’t get drawn into the contest and can deliver the ball by foot.
In today’s unpredictable AFL competition there is one certainty, and that is this Friday night Dyson Heppell, Dylan Shiel, Zach Merrett and company will provide the Adelaide midfielders with a much sterner test than they received last week.
How the reshaped Crows mids handle it is what we all want to see.