AFL 2025: Adelaide’s older side paying dividends in fantastic start to 2025 season

Adelaide have started the season in fine form winning their opening two games. Matt Turner looks at a telling statistic that has the Crows well placed to end their finals drought.

Adelaide’s best start under Matthew Nicks has been spearheaded by the club’s oldest team during the senior coach’s tenure.

The Crows fielded their most mature side since round 23, 2019 in their 61-point thumping of Essendon at the MCG on Saturday.

Boasting an average age of 25 years, 263 days, Adelaide’s line-up against the Bombers was the seventh-oldest across the round.

It was also the second-most experienced for games played in Nicks’s six campaigns at the club.

Matthew Nicks has coached his Crows to a 2-0 start. Picture: Getty Images

Not since Don Pyke’s last game as Crows senior coach – against the Western Bulldogs in Ballarat five-and-a-half seasons ago – had the club fielded a team that old.

The average age was just over 27 years in Pyke’s swan song, but dropped significantly the next season when Nicks arrived and youngsters were blooded as the club started a rebuild.

Adelaide had the seventh-youngest list in 2020, the most youthful in 2021 and 2022, then the second-youngest in 2023.

It climbed from fifth-youngest (average age of 24.1) to seventh-oldest (24.7) after the off-season recruitment of Melbourne’s Alex Neal-Bullen, 29, and GWS duo Isaac Cumming, 26, and James Peatling, 24.

Add to that Wayne Milera’s comeback and Adelaide suddenly has far more experience – and quality – compared to last year when injuries exposed a lack of depth.

Neal-Bullen, Cumming, Peatling and Milera replace the likes of Lachie Murphy, Ned McHenry, Luke Nankervis and Sam Berry.

With the pieces starting to fall into place, the Crows demolished a Bombers side that was the second-youngest and second-least experienced in round 2.

The Crows were hot against Essendon. Picture: Getty Images

Adelaide’s score of 161 was its 12th-biggest since 1999, according to Champion Data.

The Crows’ 109 points from turnovers was their seventh-best during that span.

Saturday’s performance was one of the most comprehensive of the Nicks era.

Adelaide’s 48 points from forward-half intercepts ranked sixth during his time as coach, while points from defensive half (third-best), scores per inside 50 of 57 per cent (eighth) and defensive 50 to inside 50 chains of 34 per cent (fourth) also ranked highly under Nicks.

Milera’s availability, Rory Laird’s return to half-back and the signing of Cumming have helped the team’s ball movement, one of its issues in 2024.

Two games is a small sample size but the older, more experienced Crows have had two statement wins and are off to their first 2-0 start since 2017.

With a healthy list so far, they look well placed to end their eight-year finals drought.

Originally published as AFL 2025: Adelaide’s older side paying dividends in fantastic start to 2025 season