Crows close their Adelaide Oval calendar for 2018 with another Kangaroo cull
ADELAIDE will finish its AFL season of disappointment with a positive 12-10 win-loss count if the Crows can beat last-ranked Carlton on Saturday. Already the internal focus is on making sure there is September action next season.
IT will be at least 214 days before the Adelaide Football Club returns to Adelaide Oval for an AFL premiership match. This is the Crows’ longest pre-season since 2014 — and most interesting.
Half the club membership (now listed by Adelaide at 97,675) took seats and perches at Adelaide Oval on Sunday afternoon to enjoy a hot nine-point win against fellow also-ran North Melbourne that puts the Crows’ win-loss count in the positive, 11-10.
It will finish at a “winning” 12-10 on cleaning up last-placed Carlton in Melbourne on Saturday night.
All of the membership will wonder what is to come from these 214 days to correct a team at a club that in 2014 drew a line through accepting mediocrity.
The coach, Don Pyke, will stay. His staff will change, but not dramatically as an in-house review managed by club chairman Rob Chapman has read this season’s pendulum at more “bad luck” than “bad management”.
The player list will change, as it always does whether it is a good or bad season. And there is no doubt they will return for pre-season training with less torment than a losing grand finalist carries.
The continued culling of the Kangaroos — now no loss to North Melbourne in 11 games at Adelaide Oval and Football Park since August 23, 2003 — is more significant than usual for how the Crows on Sunday protected a makeshift defence.
The absence by injury of key defender Daniel Talia (lower leg), the loss of fellow tall defender Alex Keath (hamstring) on Saturday and the withdrawal of comeback half-back Brodie Smith (corked calf) before the game exposed the Crows to being vulnerable to North Melbourne’s two-tower attack with Ben Brown and Jarrad Waite.
As threatening as Waite appeared, particularly after scoring the first goal in the 54th second, this pair delivered just three goals all from Waite.
Again, Matt Crouch, Rory Sloane and Rory Laird set the winning agenda for Adelaide.
Most reassuring for Pyke is how his players seem liberated and at ease to play “good footy’ again.
Imagine what might come from 214 days of hard work with the lessons of what not to repeat this summer.
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