Port Adelaide inflict a record-breaking deficit on hapless Crows in Showdown 48
It was party time for Port Adelaide as they decimated their arch-rivals, with Steven Motlop taking a mark of the year contender. And the numbers are alarming reading for the Crows.
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When you’ve waited 150 years to celebrate what’s another 84 days and Port Adelaide partied like it was 1870 on Saturday night by belting arch rival Adelaide in Showdown 48.
They were fashionably late to the party - 10 minutes to be exact as the Crows kicked the first two goals - but when they arrived, boy did you know it.
The kids lit the candles with Connor Rozee’s class, Xavier Duursma’s bow-and-arrow, Zak Butters’ mid-air goal and Steven Motlop’s hanger, while veterans Brad Ebert, Robbie Gray, Travis Boak and Justin Westhoff continued to defy father time to blow them out.
At the end it was one big 150th anniversary celebration for the 22 players and 1475 fans who had waited three months for the AFL restart to sing the club song in their prison bar guernseys and level the Showdown ledger at 24-apiece.
Adelaide was so poor that the biggest risk for Port wasn’t the Crows but the 84-day break between games given they were undefeated in the pre-season and steamrolled Gold Coast by 47 points in Round 1 in March.
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It looked a threat early but was never genuine. The Power got on top in the middle, out-hunted, outnumbered and outworked Adelaide for a record 75-point victory.
They even had time to poke fun at the Crows nearing halftime by putting a Taylor Walker tweet on the big-screen and again in the last term by booing Mark Ricciuto when he flashed up on the screen from the commentary box.
To make it worse for Crows fans, they lost Jake Kelly in the first quarter and captain Rory Sloane to injury in the third.
Port Adelaide’s coach Ken Hinkley heralded his side’s 75-point win as “really satisfying and great reward for the boys”.
“We’re a good team,” he said.
“And it’s good to play like a good team again tonight.”
Hinkley said his side’s dominant performance was the result of coming back from the COVID-19 shutdown in great shape.
“We trained like we really hadn’t been away for that long, which was really pleasing, but we knew we were coming into a Showdown so we knew we had to be at our absolute best and Showdowns bring out the best in you.”
The Crows kicked two early goals before the Power stepped up a gear, which also pleased Hinkley.
“We had to withstand a bit of pressure during the start of the game and that’s the team getting stronger and better and our back six players particularly held up really well for us and we put our run and our speed out there on the ground and we’re a pretty hard, fast side now, which is really exciting for a coach.”
Winning his second Showdown Medal, Travis Boak said he was equally proud of the way the boys had come back from that break and that winning in the historic prison bars was a proud day for the club.
“I think we’re in a good space,” he said.
“For our group, being able to maintain where we were at after an outstanding pre-season and outstanding round one game, and for the guys to maintain that level of energy and want was the most pleasing thing.”
Crows coach Matthew Nicks described the loss as a “really embarrassing performance” that was marked by inconsistency and a lack of contest.
“We allowed them to play football the way they wanted to play football and that’s what we’re most disappointed about as a group,” he said.
THE CHOSEN ONE
Robbie Gray remains Mr Showdown but he may be fast passing the baton to Connor Rozee.
The comparisons are impossible to ignore - the smarts, the versatility, the goal-sense, the touch, the mystifying moments - and in the first quarter there was brilliance from both in the same passage as Gray won a ground ball and flicked a handball to Rozee who snapped a goal around his body.
Rozee had seven touches, one goal, two score involvements and three tackles in the first term and got better, beating Rory Sloane at a centre bounce and laying a desperate smother on Ben Keays in defence.
MARSHALL MATTERS
It’s been said before but this time it’s for real - Todd Marshall has arrived and this time as the full package.
We’ve seen his footy-brain, his hands at ground level and flashes of aerial brilliance but he finally looks to have grown into his body and brings a physical presence.
Crows first-round draft pick Fischer McAsey is going to be very good but when he was out-bodied by Marshall in a marking contest in the second quarter it looked every bit the first versus fourth-year player colliding.
If Marshall is the apprentice of the hybrid-tall then Justin Westhoff is the master and he again worked hard to appear exactly where his team needed him at the right time.
MIDFIELD DOMINANCE
Adelaide was out-muscled by the Swans at stoppages in Round 1 and despite having two months to work on their inside physicality, were found wanting against the Power.
Brad Crouch, Matt Crouch, Rory Sloane, Brodie Smith and Chayce Jones were no match for Port Adelaide’s Boak, Rozee, Tom Rockliff and Dan Houston and when they needed a spell, Sam Powell-Pepper and Robbie Gray came in and maintained the pressure.
The Crows lost clearances by 10, contested possession by 19 and tackles by 16.
Brad Crouch had 25 disposals and a goal but wasn’t at his best, giving away a free kick and 50m penalty for a Brad Ebert goal when the game was still alive in the second quarter.
MOTLOP MADE FOR IT
Two years after his last-gasp Showdown heroics, Steven Motlop embraced the stage again. His creative running was dangerous all night but his big moment came in the third term when he timed his run to perfection and soared over Paul Seedsman to take a spectacular mark. Then to finish it off he kicked a brilliant set shot from the boundary and minutes later made it two in a row.
Motlop gets up!#AFLPowerCrows pic.twitter.com/bouuHtgbe1
— AFL (@AFL) June 13, 2020
ANALYSIS
In 2019, Port Adelaide became the first team on record to lead the AFL in the “time-in-forward-half” differential and yet miss the finals.
That was just one example of why Power fans were well within their rights to question: How on earth could our team be so dominant on the stats sheet and yet not qualify for the pointy end of the season?
This year, the stats don’t lie. Port Adelaide are dominant on the stats sheet. Dominant on the field.
In Port’s thumping 75-point win over the Crows in Showdown 48 – and wearing their prison bars, no less – the numbers spoke volumes about how convincingly they beat their cross-town rivals.
Port won every single statistic on the sheet.
They were +104 in disposals, +66 in marks, +27 in inside-50s, +10 in hit outs, +19 contested possessions … it just went on.
The +10 in clearances that Port finished with, started early in the game, considering at quarter time two Power players had amassed more clearances than the entire Crows side: Connor Rozee with four clearances, and Travis Boak with three of his own, to the Crows’ six.
On the other side of the stats sheet, the numbers didn’t lie for Adelaide either: and they were utterly damning.
While Port had 57 inside 50s, the Crows laid only four tackles when in their defensive 50 – none at all in the third term.
The Crows also lacked any strong presence in the air, and while the Power took 105 grabs for the match, Adelaide took less than half that amount and finished with 39 – and despite heading into their own forward lines 30 times, they took four marks inside 50 for the entire match. Four.
If there was one positive to glean from the numbers for the Crows, it was that they vastly improved their centre clearance count from their abysmal effort against Sydney in round one – some 80-odd days ago – when they finished the game with five centre clearances (compared with the Swans’ 20). On Saturday night, they had nine (to Port’s 13).
Sure, the numbers told a story – heck, the Power even won the free kick count 17-14 - but those couldn’t show the full picture and the beauty of how Port played that game; the exciting brand of football they brought to the ground after the COVID-19 hiatus; including when Steven Motlop took a screaming mark in the third quarter and then slotted through his side’s 11th goal of the game.
The way Rozee was about to pinpoint his kicks going inside 50.
Or the way that the “Power” chant sounded out across Adelaide Oval and reverberated through the mostly empty stands when it when Charlie Dixon kicked his third goal of the night.
SCOREBOARD
PORT ADELAIDE 4.2 8.4 14.7 17.8 (110)
ADELAIDE 2.1 3.2 4.3 5.5 (35)
SHOWDOWN MEDAL: Travis Boak.
BEST
Port Adelaide: Rozee, Motlop, Boak, Ebert, McKenzie, Westhoff, Butters, Marshall.
Adelaide: O’Brien, Talia, Brown, Laird.
GOALS
Port Adelaide: Duursma, Dixon, Westhoff 3, Marshall, Motlop 2, Rozee, Butters, Ebert, Boak.
Adelaide: Sloane, Fogarty, Smith, Crocker, B. Crouch.
INJURIES
Crows: Kelly (head), Sloane (corkie).
UMPIRES - L. Haussen, M. Nicholls, C. Fleer, E. Glouftsis.
CROWD - 2240 at Adelaide Oval.
Originally published as Port Adelaide inflict a record-breaking deficit on hapless Crows in Showdown 48