SANFL: South Adelaide destroy West Adelaide 138-67 at Hickinbotham Oval

WEST Adelaide’s premiership defence has reached crisis point with the Bloods having now lost their opening three games of the SANFL season by a combined 220 points.

10/04/16 - SANFL: South Adelaide v West Adelaide at Noarlunga. Souths' Alex Cailotto takes a strong grab. Photo Tom Huntley

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WEST Adelaide’s premiership defence has reached crisis point with the Bloods having now lost their opening three games of the SANFL season by a combined 220 points.

Sunday’s 71-point belting from South Adelaide consigned the reigning premier to a 0-3 start and with seemingly no way out of the mess.

What was somewhat lost amid West Adelaide’s despair at Noarlunga was just how good South Adelaide is looking after a convincing 3-0 start to the year.

The Panthers have one of the best defensive groups in the competition, full forward Brett Eddy — who kicked eight goals — is a nightmare match-up and their midfield is led by dual Magarey Medallist Joel Cross.

“Pretty happy,” South coach Brad Gotch said last night. “To kick over 20 goals and to kick straight that was really exciting, our forwards looked dangerous, midfielders worked well and some of our transition was as good as we’ve done for a long time.”

West Adelaide has massive problems as it struggles to plug holes left by departing premiership players and those on the injury list.

The Bloods’ forward line lacks potency, their skills aren’t up to league level resulting in far too many turnovers and again Sunday the workload was left to too few including Kaine Stevens, Chris Schmidt, Travis Tuck and Trent Stubbs — who has played just three games for the club.

“We’re not going to wait for it to turn, we’re going to make it turn with our effort and commitment to the process,” West coach Mark Mickan said.

“At the moment it’s not where we want it but the players are committed to turning it around as the coaches are and as I said to the players after the game, there’s no easy fix, it’s all about continuing to work.

“If we were 3-0 we wouldn’t get carried away and we’re not beating ourselves up because it’s the other way around.”

Mickan believes the players’ effort is there — evidenced by winning clearances 44-30 on Sunday — but says skill execution is killing them.

The Panthers’ performance, however, could not have been more impressive.

A lot of South’s attack begins in defence where Tom Fields is an elite kick, captain Bradley Crabb is a superb one-on-one defender, Cam De Visser is aggressive and creative and Tarak Redigolo can play shutdown or provide run.

The home side booted the first three goals of the game and had West immediately on the back foot as Jake Veide was lively on the wing, Sam Overall took contested marks at either end of the ground and Daniel Bass got on top in ruck.

Veide was slaying the Bloods early with eight first-quarter disposals and two pin-point passes inside 50m to set up two goals.

The Bloods were their own worst enemy at times with poor decisions and foot skills resulting in turnovers and costing them goals.

Ben Haren kicked his third goal with a 55m bomb to open the third quarter and when Eddy snapped truly straight after the Panthers were out to a seven-goal lead.

That led to a seven-goal-to-one third quarter which all but buried the defending champs.

SCOREBOARD

SOUTH ADELAIDE 6.2 10.2 17.4 22.6 (138)

WEST ADELAIDE 2.1 5.3 6.5 10.7 (67)

BEST — South Adelaide: Eddy, Veide, Redigolo, Barnes, Hitchcock, Cross, Haren. West Adelaide: Stevens, Stubbs, Schiller, Schmidt, Tuck, Hardy.

GOALS — South Adelaide: Eddy 8, Haren, Overall 3, Schwarz, Hitchcock 2, Barnes, Gotch, Rankine, Bass. West Adelaide: Stubbs, Green 2, Johnson, Fielke, Middleton, Silverlock, Tuck, Hill.

INJURIES — West Adelaide: Webb (leg), Slattery (leg).

UMPIRES — T. Philp, A. Bennett, L. Haussen.

CROWD — 1374 at Hickinbotham Oval.