Showdown 43 highlights vast gap between Adelaide and Port Adelaide, writes Michelangelo Rucci
SOMETIMES you cannot ignore the premiership table and Showdown 43 highlighted a vast gap between Adelaide and Port Adelaide, writes Michelangelo Rucci.
SOMETIMES you cannot ignore the premiership table – even just before a Showdown.
This is more relevant in the second derby of the season when form is clearly favouring top-ranked Adelaide this year.
Showdown 43 highlights a vast gap between the Crows and Port Adelaide football teams – and that just wanting to win might motivate the Power players, but that spirit no longer is the bridge across the class differential.
Adelaide is on its way to an AFL premiership. Port Adelaide is getting more reminders of how far short it is from a being a genuine contender.
There may be just 4.2 kilometres between the front doors of the two clubs from Alberton to West Lakes, but there is a galaxy between their football fortunes.
This stood out from the start of the derby that ignored all the mythical themes repeatedly presented about ignoring form, the AFL ladder and the betting odds in Showdowns. Not even the wintry weather nor Adelaide’s abhorrent goalkicking could spare the Power from being horribly exposed as inferior to a true AFL premiership pacesetter.
The Crows’ great insurance policy against the waste on the scoreboard - 1.9 at quarter-time and 5.15 at half-time with two shots out-of-bounds on the full - was in the complete feast Don Pyke’s players were having in controlling the ball.
At half-time, when there was no contest any more, the disposal count favoured the Crows by 93 (224 to 131). The territorial game was heavily in Adelaide’s half, with or against that blustery wind coming off the gulf.
The AFL’s best attack at Adelaide overwhelmed the league’s most miserly defence by winning and controlling the ball from its contests.
Crows midfielder Rory Sloane, the Showdown Medallist in April, set that agenda. Adelaide’s attack – in particular Tom Lynch – emphasised the best way to impose defence is with intense pressure in the forward-50 arc.
The spills, the turnovers, the intercepts forced on the Power defenders – and the energetic work of Crows specialist forward Eddie Betts, back on deck after a week off to recuperate from a burst appendix, did not show up to its fullest on the scoreboard. But it was dominance – in bold capitals and underlined.
Betts was denied by an accurate score review a goal of the year contender in the second term from the north-western pocket. He had nothing get in the way of his bouncing kick after the take from Josh Jenkins’ hands in the south-western picket midway through the third term.
There is no way to know what could have been in the Port Adelaide attack with the recall after 708 days of specialist forward Angus Monfries. The ball was not at the Power goalfront often enough to assess what the veteran could offer after such a long stint on the sidelines.
The All-Australian selectors now have their answer on the absorbing, year-long ruck battle that made this Showdown also a showdown between Adelaide’s Sam Jacobs and the Power’s Patrick Ryder. Jacobs has won.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au