2025 AFL Season Previews: Adelaide

Is this Matthew Nicks' last stand?

This year, I’m doing my previews in alphabetical order – so the Crows are up first.

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2024 ladder position: 15th (8 wins, 14 losses, 1 draw)

2024 best-and-fairest: Jordan Dawson/Ben Keays

Senior coach: Matthew Nicks

Story of the season

Fuelled by the injustice of Ben Keays’ last-minute goal against Sydney in the penultimate round of 2023 being ruled a behind, and the agony of a clutch of close losses, the Crows were meant to fly out of the blocks in 2024. Instead, they tripped on the starting gate and fell right on their faces. A shocking and rather embarrassing 0-4 start killed off their season almost as soon as it began, and ensured that the Crows were promptly banished back to the graveyard shift of Sunday twilight. If there were caveats about their eventual ladder position in 2023, there were none last year. The debacle of the Josh Rachele provocative radio interview/Showdown goal celebration/omission for disciplinary reasons, long after the broader footy world had stopped paying attention to what was happening at West Lakes, showed that the season was still capable of delivering one final kick to supporters’ soft bits. Despite some encouraging performances in the back half of the season – this bad boy can fit so many gallant defeats in it – the Crows were the biggest disappointment of 2024.

Summary of game style

The Crows under Matthew Nicks are quite unusual in how deep they maintain their set defensive position. To use language currently in vogue in soccer, they’re happy to sit in a low block. It’s a funny coincidence of deliberate strategy and adaptation. They ranked 14th last year for clearance differential, meaning they were often starting with the ball in their defensive half. At the same time, the disposal skills of Mitch Hinge, Jordan Dawson and Taylor Walker, together with the running power of players like Ben Keays, allowed them to quickly slingshot from deep defensive positions, catch their opponents up the field, and create overloads and one-on-ones inside attacking 50. For the opposition supporters who find themselves constantly wondering how Keays kicks so many against them from the goal square (hello, Carlton fans), there’s your explanation. It’s the expression of a simple philosophy – to compress the ground when defending and expand it when attacking – and the reason why, for all their faults in 2024, the Crows were still very good at scoring from their back half. Don’t believe me? Adam Treloar and Josh Dunkley said pretty much the same thing on their podcast.

However, that strategy came undone in key moments early of the 2024 season. Or perhaps it’s better to say it wasn’t even attempted. Time and time again in the first month of the season, the Crows would advance the ball up the boundary line, seemingly spooked about conceding possession in dangerous areas of the field, and the loss of Riley Thilthorpe’s marking and ability to link play. It was a far cry from the quickness and boldness that characterised their back-half ball movement in 2023. And it didn’t even work. In 2023, the Crows were first in the AFL for scores from turnover, despite only ranking 13th for number of opposition turnovers inflicted. They made their opponents pay. At the same time, they ranked fifth for opposition scores from turnover, conceding an average of 44.3 points per game. Last year, they conceded… 45 points per game, a relative improvement but not an actual one. We saw flashes of that ball movement in some games – Carlton in Round 5 being the best example – but too often, the Crows looked clueless when attempting to break down a settled opposition defence.

If the Crows are to once again become the fearsome attacking force they were in 2023 (assuming Taylor Walker can’t wind back the clock again), they must add two layers to their game. The first is becoming a more proficient intercepting team. Mark Keane was ninth among all AFL players for intercept possessions per game last year, but often played a lone hand. Overall, Adelaide were a mediocre intercept marking team (14th in the AFL). Not every team relies on intercepts to win the ball. Both Sydney and GWS ranked in the bottom-four for intercept marks last year, and Brisbane ranked 15th for intercept possessions. They all did fine. But unlike those teams, Adelaide weren’t effective at winning the ball higher up the field via other means – see the clearance differential numbers I cited above. The second layer is scoring from the forward half. The trade-off of making the field big when attacking is that you also make it big for the opposition defenders. Time and time again, an errant kick would result in an opposition defender calmly rebounding the ball, with Taylor Walker loping after them, barely in shot. The Crows ranked a lowly 15th for scores from forward half differential. They have players who can exploit front-half turnovers. But their style doesn’t generate many of them.

List changes

In: 

• Sid Draper (2024 National Draft, pick #4)

• Tyler Welsh (2024 National Draft, pick #59)

• Isaac Cumming (free agency – Greater Western Sydney)

• Alex Neal-Bullen (trade – Melbourne)

• James Peatling (trade – Greater Western Sydney)

Out:

• Elliott Himmelberg (free agency – Gold Coast)

• Lachlan Gollant (delisted)

• Will Hamill (delisted)

• Ned McHenry (delisted)

• Patrick Parnell (delisted)

• Rory Sloane (retired)

List profile

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Number of top-10 draft picks: six (T-10th)

Average age at Opening Round: 24.8 (8th)

Average number of games played: 69 (nice) (12th)

For fans of mediocre teams, the trade and draft period can spark more joy than the actual footy. The Crows had the type of off-season to lift flagging supporter morale, drafting a highly-rated midfielder, a speculative but talented father-son forward, and securing three players via free agency and trade. Isaac Cumming, James Peatling and Alex Neal-Bullen should all fill valuable roles in this team. Demographically, their additions mean that Adelaide’s list isn’t especially young anymore – certainly not to the extent of using youth as an excuse.

Although, as I expand on below, it’s yet to find its post-Tex shape, the forward line has immense scoring power and is, at the time of writing, clearly Adelaide’s area of strength. Riley Thilthorpe and Darcy Fogarty have the makings of something close to a league-best forward pair, while Josh Rachele and co-best-and-fairest Ben Keays offer craft and graft respectively. But despite the quality of personnel, questions remain – mostly concerning Taylor Walker. Will he play every game he can? How does he fit in a forward line led by Thilthorpe? Won’t lining up with three talls (or even four, depending on where Dan Curtin plays) make the Crows too top-heavy? As I wrote in the style of play section, for all its firepower, opposition defences often found it easy to start quality possession chains from the Crows defensive 50. Given Walker’s troublesome back, and lingering doubts over Thilthorpe’s knee, it’s possible that there won’t actually be that many selection dilemmas. But Matthew Nicks must consider the trade-off between marking and mobility.

The Crows’ defensive unit is developing well. Jordon Butts and Nick Murray are honest, old-fashioned key defenders, while Josh Worrell (medium/tall) and Max Michalanney (medium/small) are agile and versatile enough to play on different-sized opponents, and young enough to improve their attacking ability. The two diamonds in the rough, costing nothing except two list spots between them, are Keane and Mitch Hinge. The latter offers rebound and penetrative disposal from defensive 50, while the former has emerged from the wilderness (well, Cork) to become Adelaide’s best interceptor and one of the team’s most creative ball users. He was one of the finds of the season for any club. I’ve already spoken about the need to become a better intercepting team. Much the same way as intercept marking remains an area of improvement for Adelaide’s defence, so does the ability to win defensive-50 ground balls. The Crows were 17th for opposition forward-50 ground ball gets, an area of weakness which was ruthlessly exposed by the likes of Hawthorn. I suspect that’s part of the reason why Rory Laird has been moved back to defence. For all the grumbling from Crows fans about his limitations, Laird remains very capable at ground level (22nd among all AFL players in 2024 for ground ball gets). Wayne Milera provides a point of difference with his evasion and disposal, but after a second serious knee injury last season, there are significant question marks over his durability.

As it has been ever since Matthew Nicks took over as head coach, it’s the midfield that remains as the biggest area of concern. Nicks’ persistence with an unimaginative Sloane-Laird-Keays triumvirate during his early tenure, combined with poor drafting, meant the Crows didn’t have a young midfielder worth investing real minutes into until Jake Soligo. His emergence, together with Dawson’s move into the middle and Izak Rankine also attending more centre bounces, has provided Nicks with more options. 15 Crows players attended centre bounces as midfielders in 2024. James Peatling and Alex Neal-Bullen will provide even more options. But Rankine is undoubtedly the key. He is the Crows’ best player and showed enough last year to suggest he could become one of the competition’s best midfielders. If he does, the Crows midfield, after a painful period of mediocrity, might finally have the talent and versatility to match it with some of the best in the AFL. Nicks and midfield coach Nathan van Berlo will be able to roll out several different combinations depending on the opposition and the game state.

Of the delistings, Will Hamill can perhaps consider himself slightly unlucky. There’s a good player there. Sadly, a series of concussions meant Crows fans didn’t get to see him often enough.

Line rankings

Defence: Above Average

Midfield: Average

Forwards: Elite

Ruck: Average

The case for optimism

Izak Rankine and Riley Thilthorpe only played one full game together last year – a 39-point win against the Western Bulldogs in Round 22. The Crows were leading the Showdown the following week until Rankine was poleaxed by Dan Houston. Pointing out that teams play worse when their best players are injured isn’t exactly razor-sharp analysis. But it’s impossible to deny that injuries to key players were a major reason the Crows’ season never got off the ground. Yes, every team gets injuries. And if you just look at the aggregate of games missed due to injury, then Adelaide were around the middle of the pack. However, change the focus to best-22 players, and the picture looks rather different. Rankine could only manage 15 games in 2024. Thilthorpe, seven. Nick Murray, nine (and he looked well below his best in them). Wayne Milera – an important cog in the Crows’ back-half ball movement in 2023 – only managed two games before a serious knee injury against Fremantle. The emergence of a solid young core, and the additions of Cumming, Peatling and Neal-Bullen, mean the Crows now have a decently high floor. The fitness and form of Rankine and Thilthorpe will determine the height of their ceiling in 2025.

This time last year, I wrote that you could just about find a top-four side if you looked long enough at the underlying metrics. That wasn’t the case in 2024. However, the Crows were very good for a bottom-four side; miles better than the three teams below them and plausibly about as good as Essendon, Melbourne and St Kilda. A 2-6 record in games decided by two goals or fewer made them look worse than they were. The Crows were mediocre, rather than downright bad. But – and here’s the optimistic bit – they had the ladder position, and draft pick, of a bad side. Which meant they had access to the one type of player they haven’t really had a chance at since they bottomed out – a top-of-the-line midfielder. If you could design a player to spark some life into the Crows’ plodding midfield, they’d probably look a fair bit like Sid Draper. While the South Australian shouldn’t be expected to make an immediate impact, if he ends up adding speed and quality to the Crows’ engine room, they might (totally by accident) eventually regard 2024 as taking one step backward to take a larger one forward.

Beyond Draper, the three trade and free agency additions should immediately improve the Crows. Fitness pending, Isaac Cumming is the presumptive favourite to start on a wing in Round 1, and his height will provide a useful marking outlet if Nicks persists with a more conservative ball movement scheme. James Peatling broke into a talented GWS midfield in 2024, and should do the same in Adelaide. Alex Neal-Bullen’s aerobic capacity and defensive discipline helped unlock Christian Petracca’s full potential at the Demons, while also being an underrated forward player in his own right. If he can facilitate for Izak Rankine like he did for Petracca, then the Crows will have full use of one of the game’s most potent attacking weapons.

A final reason for optimism: the Crows ended up having the hardest fixture of any side in 2024 – by a long way. This year, they’re expected to have something like the fifth-easiest.

The case for pessimism

I want to return to two points I made in the corresponding section of last year’s preview. The first thing I said was that the Crows couldn’t rely on the same kind of forward line overperformance. The second thing was that they still relied slightly too much on older players to drive performance than you’d want from a young team. Both points remain relevant.

In 2023, Adelaide were the highest-scoring side and the most efficient scorers. They took more shots on goal than any other side, scored the most from turnovers, and the second-most from the back half – all despite only having the fifth-most inside 50s and taking harder shots on goal than any other side. More than anything, those attacking numbers were down to the performance of one man: Taylor Walker. Walker’s Indian summer was mightily impressive. But it was never going to be sustainable. So it proved in 2024. A persistent back injury limited his effectiveness and further reduced his mobility. But, partly because of Thilthorpe’s absence through injury, he still played whenever vaguely fit. The end result was that the Crows were overly dependent on a player whose attacking output was significantly curtailed, and whose defensive output is now virtually non-existent.

Walker is entering what will almost certainly be the final year of his career. But, due to a combination of his determination to play when fit and Thilthorpe’s injury, we still haven’t seen enough evidence of what a post-Tex forward line looks like. Thilthorpe, Fogarty, Keays, Rachele, Neal-Bullen, Curtin and a bit of Walker and Rankine looks potent on paper. But the game isn’t played on paper.

This ties in to the second point: the Crows, at least until this point, have relied too much on older players. Rory Laird and Matt Crouch were both in the club’s top five rated players in 2024. That’s a credit to them, but should also be read as an indictment on the club’s drafting. And here’s the kicker: Matthew Nicks is coaching for his career this year. He’s generally trusted youth. But if he’s hunting wins in 2025, there’s a chance he’ll continue to rely on known quantities rather than handing the keys over to the next generation.

For many Crows fans, Nicks himself is cause for pessimism. Until last year, he’d overseen steady improvement. The Rachele fiasco left a bitter taste. But the more alarming issue is the team’s regression. What else can you call going from seventh for inside-50 differential in 2023 to 13th last year? From first in scores from turnover to 13th? From ninth in forward-50 ground ball gets differential to 17th? These aren’t just cherry-picked stats, either – they’re increasingly central to the way the modern game is played. And the Crows have a long way to go.

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Breakout player

Last year, I was set to nominate Riley Thilthorpe for a breakout year until he hurt his knee in the final trial game, after which I switched to Jake Soligo. Soligo did blossom after being converted into a full-time inside midfielder, and a much larger, hairier and more intimidating Thilthorpe imposed himself on the competition, albeit across a small sample size. This year, I’ll go for Dan Curtin. The Crows didn’t really know what to do with the West Australian last year, who played in midfield as a junior until a sudden growth spurt pushed him down back. Funnily enough, he’s actually looked most comfortable as a marking half-forward in his sporadic senior appearances. This pre-season, Curtin is training with the forwards while also getting an occasional run through the midfield. His talent is clear. In 2025, his role will probably become clearer as well.

Most important player

In 2023, Jordan Dawson was clearly Adelaide’s most important player because of the tangible and intangible on-field value he brought, which helped the Crows became a decent side – ball-winning, excellent foot skills, tactical organisation, vocal leadership. In 2024, Izak Rankine became the side’s most important player, almost as much because of the games he didn’t play as those he did. As sides advance in their list build, and get closer to the point where they ought to be challenging for the flag, their focus shifts from players who make their minimum level better to players who make their maximum level higher. Rankine is a prime example of the latter. His move into the middle (he attended an average of 38 percent of centre bounces in 2024) showed he can become one of the competition’s best midfielders. He needs to stay fit, stay out of tribunal trouble – and Matthew Nicks needs to give him more midfield time.

Thankfully, the rat’s tail is a thing of the past.

Biggest question to answer

Can Adelaide once again resemble the irresistible attacking force of 2023? The pieces all appear to be there. But last year, they were hamstrung by injuries and their own tactics. For the Crows to fly up the ladder, it must fire on all cylinders.

What success looks like

Finals. No ifs, no buts, no excuses. Even finishing seventh or eighth may not be enough for an impatient fanbase and board. The Crows probably have the talent to win a final. But do they have the coach?

In a nutshell

Matthew Nicks is propped up at the bar of the last chance saloon. This year, he’s either striding out of there with a smile on his face, or getting carried out on a slab. It’s a make-or-break year for him, and possibly the Crows’ entire list build.

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Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against the Crows? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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