Crows survive so many missed opportunities to keep their AFL season alive with dramatic Showdown 45 against Port Adelaide
IT is the most remarkable rivalry — with the most remarkable finishes, this time making Crows key forward Josh Jenkins finding his place in Showdown history.
- ‘I think it hit the post’: Jenkins comes clean on winning goal
- Never-say-die Crows muddy Port’s finals hopes
IT is the most remarkable rivalry — with the most remarkable finishes, this time with Crows key forward Josh Jenkins finding his place in Showdown history.
Jenkins’ dramatic snap at goal — that had to survive score review when even Jenkins thought he had hit the post — gave Adelaide the victory it had worked so hard to achieve and to perhaps keep its slim AFL finals hopes alive.
Just like the Crows’ erratic season, Showdown 45 demanded Adelaide work against so many potholes — this time of its own making with 13.16 on the scoreboard. But persistence does have its rewards.
And Port Adelaide will wonder what slipped when vice-captain Ollie Wines kicked across goal from 15 metres to put the ball out-of-bounds on the full rather than give the Power a 16-point lead with time-on to play.
This was THE match at a time when the Australian game needs reassurance it ain’t broke and does not need fixing, well not much when it is played to positive themes. But then it is THE Showdown — the best of the modern AFL rivalries that more often than not delivers what Australia’s Game wants for its on-field image.
The 10-goal first quarter equals the Showdown record (written in both derbies in 2000) for goals scored in the opening term. And Adelaide will wonder why it could not keep delivering five-goal returns in the second and third quarters — the Crows certainly were not short of chances.
Port Adelaide’s second-game midfielder Kane Farrell put up three of those first-term goals to emphasise the pre-game script can be about the scoring threats posed by Eddie Betts and Robbie Gray, but the derby is always open to hailing new heroes.
And whatever misgivings Farrell had when the Power called his name at No. 51 in last year’s AFL national draft would have faded with each of those goals.
Betts, the master with 34 goals in his previous nine derbies, drew a surprising match-up with experienced Power defender Jasper Pittard who last played in a winning Showdown on May 3, 2015. It later became the much-expected Betts-Tom Jonas duel.
Betts with ball in hand still makes everyone hold their breath. But off his boot, the ball does not behave in such a threatening way anymore. And he seems to lack the confidence on mid-range set shots.
Betts waited until the last six minutes for his first — and only — goal that made it a four-point game, as everyone has come to expect in this rivalry.
One of Hinkley and defence coach Nathan Bassett’s brave match-ups was assigning young defender Dan Houston the critical challenge of guarding the powerful linkman in Adelaide’s attacking play, Tom Lynch.
The northerly that swept over Adelaide Oval — taken up first by the Crows with captain Taylor Walker winning the toss — always loomed as a decisive “outside” element. This was made more notable by Hinkley strategically adding to his back seven an eighth man — such as regular midfielder-forward Chad Wingard, who started first-term centre bounces at the back of the square, a tactic that would be outlawed next season with the proposed 6-6-6 starting positions.
Will the game be better without such concepts in a coach’s playbook?
Adelaide created nine scoring opportunities against the wind — and Hinkley’s clutter — in the second term, but put just 2.5 on the scoreboard while Port Adelaide created a 15-point lead midway through the quarter with 100 per cent efficiency on four big runs at goal that included Wingard’s 65-metre punt from inside the centre square.
Most recent Showdowns have told that story with the Power being wasteful and Adelaide striking with pinpoint accuracy. This torment was more frustrating for the Crows not putting the Power on the canvas in the third term with 2.6, although the six behinds includes Betts’ amazing spoil on Houston in the goalsquare in time-on.
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