Adelaide Crows trail St Kilda all day before three late goals secure a 13-point win
Adelaide pulled off one of the more remarkable finishes in AFLW history on Sunday, defying the odds after trailing all day and stunning St Kilda with a rollicking finish.
Crows
Don't miss out on the headlines from Crows. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Two weeks ago as Adelaide prepared to launch its AFLW premiership defence, coach Matthew Clarke declared “nobody knows what’s coming”.
And after his team trailed St Kilda all game on Sunday and stared down a 0-2 start to the season with five minutes left, nobody could have foreseen what would happen next.
Two goals in two minutes after a break in play when St Kilda’s Clara Fitzpatrick was stretchered off then one on the final siren saw Adelaide go from under the pump in an eight-game season to right back in the hunt.
It was 13 minutes into the final quarter when Caitlin Gould took an overhead mark at the top of the goalsquare and levelled the scores.
Then minutes later Ebony Marinoff and Anne Hatchard won the ball out of the middle and Jess Foley found Madison Newman who put the Crows in front for the first time all day, and Eloise Jones’ goal on the siren made it a 13-point win.
MORE AFL NEWS:
John Longmire on why he knocked back $6 million to stay at Sydney and his affection for his players
The X-rays of Dermott Brereton’s spine that reveal footy’s savage toll
Still without their top-end talent and co-captains due to injury, the Crows found a host of other stars like Sarah Allan and Marijana Rajcic across halfback, Danielle Ponter and Stevie-Lee Thompson in attack and Courtney Gum in clutch moments when the game was on the line.
“The whole second half I was actually pretty happy with the way we were playing,” Clarke said.
“Sometimes as a coach that’s the most challenging point where you feel ‘they’re doing what we’ve asked, the way we’ve asked but we’re not really getting an outcome’.
“So for the whole second half I was pretty comfortable. I thought the Saints dictated the game in the first half and it was probably more credit to them than us doing anything particularly wrong. But in the end we got away with one.
“Anytime you’re getting beaten you wish it was otherwise but the pleasing thing is we were able to respond. That’s the nature of footy, you’re not going to get it on your terms all the time and you’ve got to expect particularly in this competition every team is coming with great intent.”
“We’ve seen that two weeks in a row, fortunately we’ve been lucky enough to get away with a win this week and we get our season under way.”
HALF-BACK HEROES
Allan and Rajcic were huge across halfback all day. Under a mountain of pressure they filled space, made a contest in the air and won the ball at ground level and were well supported by Jess Foley who was doing it all including two big marks in defensive 50m in the third quarter.
Rhiannon Watt was just as good in defence for St Kilda with three timely intercept marks and her third under a high ball in the middle of the ground to start the second term.
EVEN SPREAD
Hot off her record breaking 35-disposal performance in Round 1, Anne Hatchard had 13 in the first half against St Kilda and finished with 24 as Ebony Marinoff led the Crows with 26 touches including 19 kicks. Her kick to find Ponter from the wing in the third quarter oozed class and was what Adelaide missed early in the game.
INSIDE 50S
Both teams were one good kick away from breaking the deadlock in the first quarter, often linking a chain of handballs together off half back only to break down with an ill-directed pass inside 50m. Ironically it was a wayward kick that finally delivered St Kilda’s first goal when Nicole Campbell missed the switch kick for the Crows and coughed it up to Kate McCarthy who ran into an open goal.
LOOSE CHECKING
The Saints were setting up with numbers behind the ball which made it hard for the Crows to find a clear avenue to goal, but the worry was they seemed to have spares in attack as well and Jess Sedunary was allowed to sit unmarked at the top of the square to kick St Kilda’s second goal.
“We had some similar issues last week in terms of (the opposition) shifting defensively really well, got the extra number down the line and we weren’t able to change the angle efficiently enough and therefore kicked it to them,” Clarke said.
”So we tried to address a few things on that front and eventually got some reward for repeat entry.”
MOMENTS OF BRILLIANCE
It took a superb individual effort from Thompson to get the Crows on the board when she turned her opponent inside-out in front of goal and Ailish Considine was there to soccer it through on the line.
More brilliance followed from Madison Newman soon after when she handballed to herself and tapped the ball forward to allow Chelsea Biddell a classy snap on goal and Courtney Gum got better the longer the game went with her one-handed mark in the middle a highlight of the game.
“Courtney was very good in the second half. We wanted to move her into the midfield in quarter two but through a series of rotations getting jammed up, she sat on the bench for about 10 minutes which was a cunning ploy on our behalf because it meant she was very fresh in the second half,” Clarke said.
“She had a significant impact on the game which was pleasing.”
FLYING THE FLAG
In front of the men’s squad, chairman Rob Chapman, AFL football operations manager Steve Hocking and Sports Minister Corey Wingard, the Crows unveiled last year’s AFWL premiership cup and flag on the ground before the game.
But the most important people to see it flying in the breeze were either in the stands, pouring through the gates or packing out the activation area at the front of the ground in further proof the Crows are winning the hearts and minds of women’s footballers of the future in this state.
The nostalgia didn’t last long and as players emerged from the race they ran through the banner which said “back at home we fly as one it’s time to play until it’s won”.
“Ultimately each season is a new beast and you’ve got to start from scratch and grow together, and this is a new group so they’re finding their way as a team,” Clarke said post-match.
“And to be able to do that today was really significant for them.”
ADELAIDE 0.0 2.1 3.2 6.4 (40)
ST KILDA 1.1 3.2 4.2 4.3 (27)
BEST – Adelaide: Marinoff, Rajcic, Hatchard, Allan, J. Foley, Thompson, A, Foley, Gum. St Kilda: Watt, Fitzpatrick, Greiser, Lucas-Rodd, Patrikios, McDonald, White.
GOALS – Adelaide: Thompson, Considine, Biddell, Gould, Newman, Jones. St Kilda: Greiser 2, McCarthy, Sedunary.
CROWD – 6433 at Richmond Oval.
INJURIES: St Kilda: Fitzpatrick (concussion).