Crows deep dive: Adelaide fail to take chances against Hawthorn in losing another winnable match against a top team
Genuine top four hopes don’t let chances to beat the top teams on their home decks slip away, but the Crows have made a habit of it in recent years. So what does that mean for Adelaide’s flag credentials?
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For Adelaide, it was an all-too-familiar result.
A narrow defeat away from home against one of the league’s best teams.
Already this year, the Crows have lost nailbiters on the road against Gold Coast (one point), Collingwood (10) and now Hawthorn (three).
Last season, they went down in a thriller at Geelong.
It was Brisbane, the Magpies and Melbourne the campaign before that.
More than those other defeats, Friday night’s was one Adelaide badly let slip.
The Crows blew a massive opportunity to back up their gritty and somewhat lucky five-point home victory against the reigning premier Lions with another significant prime time win.
Teams trying to elevate from finals-bound to the top four usually require road scalps.
Adelaide looked like it was finally going to get one after dominating the first half and leading all match until seven minutes remaining.
Poor goalkicking, cheap errors and losing key metrics it was well on top proved costly.
“It’s pretty disappointing,” Crows defender Josh Worrell said of the result.
“We had opportunities to potentially win the game and weren’t able to capitalise.
“It was right in front of us.
“We had key, vital moments we needed to take and didn’t.
“It’s obviously frustrating but in the future, it’s a good learning curve for us.”
Matthew Nicks’ side prevailed last week in part because Brisbane kicked 0.8 during the last term.
Adelaide managed just 1.7 after halftime on Friday night.
“Against the top sides, you’ve got to put them away,” Nicks said.
“We just did not put the scoreboard pressure on when we needed to.”
Taylor Walker, Josh Rachele and Riley Thilthorpe kicked 0.8 between them for the match.
Thilthorpe’s third behind came from a 40m scuff off the ground that he should have gathered and handballed to Ben Keays or Rachele, who were goalside of their opponents.
Walker and Darcy Fogarty registered just one disposal each in the last quarter.
The external debate about Adelaide’s three tall forwards will get louder this week.
Goalsneak Izak Rankine missed a pair of decent chances in the last term he would usually have kicked, before putting the Crows back in front.
But two bad spoils led to the Hawks’ matchwinner with four minutes remaining.
A silly one from Fogarty, who conceded a free kick for unsubtly punching a contested half-volley into the 10th row, 75m from goal.
Then, Sam Berry failed to kill the ball from Hawthorn’s ensuing inside 50 and instead hit it straight up in the air and lost the man he had blanketed for much of the night, Jai Newcombe. The Hawks won the loose ball, Newcombe received a handpass and put the Hawks ahead.
Little moments become big ones in those sorts of high-stakes, pressure-filled, finals-like, tight games.
Worrell did not think his team’s relative inexperience in such matches made any difference.
A win would have been massive for Adelaide in the context of its season.
Both for its top-four chances and confidence.
The Crows have rarely beaten the league’s best teams during Nicks’s six, finals-less seasons in charge, let alone in consecutive weeks or away from home.
They sit third on the ladder with a 9-5 record, albeit they are 2-5 against top-eight teams.
“We still take a lot of confidence from it,” Worrell said of Friday night’s performance.
“We’re in a good position.
“We still played the way we wanted in patches, we just need to build on that.”
Those patches came largely during the first half, which Adelaide dominated.
At half-time, the Crows were +20 in contested possessions, +18 in inside 50s and + 6 in centre clearances, but should have led by more than 15 points.
Hawthorn raised its pressure in the third term, kicked the only two goals for the quarter and restricted the visitors to 0.4.
From there, it was an arm-wrestle.
“Hawthorn got out of jail,” Fox Footy’s Jason Dunstall said.
“Adelaide probably should have had a much bigger lead earlier in the game.
“You just have to take your opportunities when they present and they weren’t able to do that.”
The Crows’ inability to win from the position they were in and the familiarity of the close loss, on the road against a quality side might leave some people questioning where they were headed this season.
Not Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell, who described the win as his side’s best of 2025.
“They’re going to be right there at the end of the season,” Mitchell said of Adelaide.
“They’re legit.”
Individual highlights for the Crows included another strong game from Dan Curtin, Berry’s tagging job on Newcombe and Worrell’s 35m chase-down tackle in the first term.
Curtin, whose 197cm height troubled Hawthorn on a wing, and key defender Jordon Butts took a game-high four contested marks each.
Berry kept Newcombe to only five disposals and one clearance at halftime, and 15 and three for the match.
Worrell’s desperate effort to catch Hawthorn small forward Nick Watson in the first term is one of the best tackles of its kind this year and will earn plenty of plaudits at West Lakes.
“I pride myself on that sort of stuff,” Worrell said.
“I think if I bring that the rest of my game comes.
“It’s that never-give-up attitude.
“I was lucky that I think he was running at about 50 per cent.”
Originally published as Crows deep dive: Adelaide fail to take chances against Hawthorn in losing another winnable match against a top team
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