Roundabout #5
How the Crows (finally) took flight.
Hello, Dear Reader!
A single topic Roundabout this week: how Adelaide finally rediscovered – with a couple of twists – the bold ball movement that saw them become the highest-scoring team of 2023. Apologies to West Coast, Brisbane and Essendon fans. Your sides’ performances on the weekend all merit closer attention. And when they repeat them, they will get the write-ups they deserve. But because of what the Crows did, and the way they did it, and just because I’m a little bit biased, they’re my subject of the week.
"We don't want to finish up in August. You get sick of watching finals footy … as do our players the longer they're in the game. So we'll embrace the expectation." – Matthew Nicks, March 2024.
Less than two months later, those words, once so pregnant with ambition and determination, had instead begun to look like a disastrous miscalculation of the potential of Adelaide’s list. Far from making the jump up the ladder that the club and many outside observers had expected, the Crows were languishing at 0-4. A spirited but futile late comeback against Gold Coast in Round 1 reminded fans of 2023, while disjointed performances against Geelong, Fremantle and Melbourne reminded them of the 2020-2022 era. Finals? How about a win first?
The optimism was based on the Crows’ spectacular attacking numbers in 2023, and a belief that the organic growth of a young group would offset any decline from Taylor Walker, who had a career-best year at the age of 33. Adelaide was ranked #1 in the AFL for goals and shots per game. #1 for scoring shots per inside-50 entry. #1 for marks on the lead. #1 for lowest opposition rebound 50 rate. #4 for marks inside 50. And #5 for inside-50 entries. The fact the Crows had the lowest expected score per shot – meaning they were taking harder shots at goal than any other side – only made the above more impressive.
Four weeks into 2024, those numbers – and the football that created them – felt like a distant, half-remembered dream. The Crows’ attacking numbers had fallen off a cliff. Coming into Saturday’s game against Carlton, they were ranked #17 for goals per game. #18 for scoring shots per inside-50 entry. #18 for marks inside 50. #18 for opposition rebound 50 rate. I could keep going. But you didn’t need the stats to confirm what the eyes saw: Adelaide’s forward line, and the midfield-forward connection, was utterly dysfunctional. The ball was coming out faster than it was going in. Lots of reasons and excuses were offered: underdone and out-of-form personnel. A vanilla midfield. The loss of Riley Thilthorpe. More opposition attention paid to Jordan Dawson. A tweak in the gameplan to prioritise preventing opposition scores rather than creating them, which manifested most obviously in more defensive kicks down the line. The departure of forward-line coach James Rahilly to Geelong. Take your pick. Most neutral observers anticipated a reversion to the mean. Few, if any, anticipated quite such a regression.
Matthew Nicks acknowledged that his side wasn’t moving the ball with fluency. They were “clunky”, in his words. However, he also insisted they were making progress. The narrow defeat to Melbourne in Gather Round was, he insisted, a “bridge” game, one where Adelaide’s structure and processes were better, even if the results on the scoreboard weren’t. But modest progress still hadn’t yielded any points or many goals. And it was only about to get tougher: a trip to Melbourne, where the Crows hadn’t won for two and a half years, to take on a 4-0 Carlton side that had won 15 of their last 17 games. Another loss, and the small flicker of hope of making finals for the first time since 2017 would have been extinguished.
The Blues have maintained the impressive form that saw them make a prelim in 2023. But they’ve become a different sort of team. Last year, they were the best side on record at scoring from stoppages. A classic Carlton play was creating a midfield or forward-half stoppage, winning the contested ball, getting it to the outside, and then kicking it to Charlie Curnow and/or Harry McKay. Michael Voss correctly surmised that such a hot streak was unlikely to last – so he set about making his side better at exploiting opposition turnovers. The results, albeit with a small sample size, were immediately apparent: going into Saturday’s game, the Blues were scoring an average of almost 60 points per game from turnover – almost 20 points more per game than last season, and good enough to be ranked #2 in the AFL, behind only the Giants. However, the Blues’ imposing record masked some defensive frailties. Through the first month of the season, they were ranked #7 in the AFL from preventing inside-50 entries from turning into shots, they were the bottom-ranked side for opposition expected score per shot. In plain English: because the Blues’ defence was pushing higher up the ground to create more intercepts, they were conceding the highest-quality shots in the competition. That was the small chink in their armour which the Crows had to penetrate if they were any chance of winning on Saturday.
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And reader, that’s what they did. Before I try to explain how they did it, it’s worth teasing out what this win could be worth. Wins like the one on Saturday can catalyse rebuilds. They instil a newfound belief in players and reignite the flagging hopes of supporters. The odds are still well and truly stacked against Adelaide making the finals from here. We could look back on it in six months as just a strange blip of a game between two sides going in different directions. But even given all that, this was still the Crows’ most significant win under Matthew Nicks. It was just their third in Melbourne since he took charge, and the first there against a top-eight side. It was a late comeback against a genuine contender. And, unlike Adelaide’s best performances of 2023, it was one secured largely thanks to the contributions of less-experienced players. A Walker and Dawson carry job, this was not. Crows fans will be delighted that their best three players on the day were Izak Rankine, Jake Soligo and Mitch Hinge. That trio has played just 160 games combined.
The Crows’ ambition was on show from the first centre bounce of the game. Matt Crouch and Rory Laird were nowhere to be seen. In their place were Jake Soligo and Izak Rankine, two of the players Adelaide fans have been demanding to see spend more time in the middle. (Laird, meanwhile, lined up in the goal-square.)
Rankine figured prominently in the first goal of the game. Let’s see the clip below.
Rankine won a loose ball inside defensive 50 and popped a smart wide kick into space for Darcy Fogarty. After Fogarty took the relieving mark at half-back, he had a decision to make. He could have waited, allowed both teams to settle into their resting shapes, and then kicked it long down the line. That would have served an adequate defensive function. But Fogarty knew that would have been a losing play. The Crows have been one of the worst sides in the competition when it comes to retaining possession from long kicks to contests. So instead, Fogarty plays on and, off a step, finds Josh Rachele, who’d worked hard to run up from half-back to create the option. The kick was perfectly weighted, just out of the reach of Adam Saad. Rachele successfully avoided the temptation to wait, instead quickly kicking it down the line to the advantage of Walker, who’d created some separation from Jacob Weitering. As the ball was dropping near Walker, you could see Ben Keays running past at the bottom of screen, with Carlton’s wingman Blake Acres in his wake. Walker’s centring kick was slightly untidy, but Luke Nankervis was able to gather, shrug a tackle, and screw it around his body for Keays, who marked in the goal-square and converted the first of his three goals.
Within two minutes of the game starting, Adelaide had already shown more confidence in their skills and coherence in their off-ball movement than they had in any of their four previous games. Rankine. Fogarty. Rachele. Walker. Nankervis. Keays. Four of the side’s best ball users were all involved, and it eventually resulted in an extremely high-value shot on goal. PS: it’s no coincidence Ben Keays loves playing against Carlton. He uses his extraordinary endurance to consistently run in behind the Blues’ aggressive defensive press, and is often the beneficiary of kicks over the back from the likes of Walker.
Here’s another clip from the first quarter which tells a complete story in just 30 seconds.
Jordon Butts started with the ball at left half-back, having received it from Mitch Hinge. Butts isn’t renowned as a great kick. That’s why, almost immediately, Lachlan Gollant and Taylor Walker drifted over to the left attacking wing area to provide a down-the-line option. In the first four rounds, that’s probably where Butts would have gone. That’s not a criticism! More talented Adelaide players would have done the same. But instead of taking that easy option, you can see Butts force himself to look inboard. In the end, he didn’t see an option he trusted himself to find, so he chipped it down the line to Luke Nankervis. The bold sixth-gamer never even considered doing the same. Instead, he exploited the fact that Carlton had tilted their defensive zone towards the boundary and went short to Will Hamill. Hamill kicked it across the ground to Max Michalanney, who, without hesitating, completed the switch to Mark Keane. The Irishman measured a short ball to Josh Rachele, who’d immediately understood the situation and burst forward to provide a centre square option. He gathered, turned, and found Matt Crouch, who’d stayed wide to provide an uncontested outlet. Rachele kept running to receive the return handball. Suddenly, without taking any great risks in possession, Adelaide had what they wanted: the ball in the hands of one of their better forward kicks, in space, running towards forward 50. There’s one more important detail that made this possession chain work: instead of running towards the ball, Izak Rankine instead retreated towards goal, which created space for Walker to lead into while also dragging Adam Saad away from a position where he could feasibly intercept the ball. Walker went back and kicked the goal.
In his post-match press conference, Matthew Nicks alluded to work that had been done to improve the team’s off-ball movement and shape in possession. Those two goals were the result of that work. Beyond the ball movement itself, there were several things which Adelaide players did to enable the move prior to or even without ever taking possession. Here’s what I saw:
The move for the first goal started with Rankine receiving the ball inside defensive 50. He was only there because he started the game in the middle. Had he started in a forward pocket, he’d have been 30-40 metres away from the play.
For the second goal, rather than drifting down the line to provide an option for the bailout kick, Reilly O’Brien held his position in the centre square. That made the down-the-line option less tempting (because it was more likely to concede possession), hence why Butts decided against it.
Clever off-ball movement by Rachele for both goals, using his burst speed, willingness to receive, and kicking skills.
Engineering both moves such that the kick inside 50 was delivered by one of Adelaide’s better ball users.
Rankine’s decoy run for the second goal, which dragged Saad away from the ball and created space for Walker to lead into.
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Here’s another passage, from midway through the second quarter, which perfectly illustrates the calculated risks the Crows were willing to take in possession. It started when Jake Soligo was awarded a free-kick for being tackled without possession. Soligo, who’s quickly developing into an excellent inside/outside midfielder, immediately surveyed his options. Here’s what he saw:
Carlton had quickly retreated into their defensive block, with a cluster of five players to discourage the corridor option. After almost taking the short, safe option to Josh Worrell on his outside – one that almost certainly would have then led to a long kick down the line – Soligo instead opted to gamble. He darted towards the centre square and threaded an exquisite kick to Rachele in the middle of the ground (I should say: there’s a chance the kick was intended for Laird). Rachele dished it off to Crouch, who found the young winger Brayden Cook with a long handball. Cook assessed his options and saw Izak Rankine rushing towards him on the lead. The kick sailed over Rankine’s head and Adelaide turned the ball over. But one error of execution doesn’t change the fact that the process taken was the right one.
This stuff isn’t rocket science. They’re the kinds of sequences which won Collingwood the flag in 2023 and which the Giants have been executing dozens of times per game: quick, competent ball use facilitated by well-time off-ball movement that creates space in dangerous areas of the field. But despite showing they were capable of this kind of ball movement last year, the Crows simply hadn’t been able to replicate it in 2024 – until Saturday evening. That dare and skill enabled them to take 18 marks inside 50, nearly three times more than their season average heading into the game. That number is the reason the Crows kicked 16.4 for the game (with 13 of those goals coming from set-shots, significantly higher than the long-term AFL average), and 9.2 from back-half chains – double their previous best for the season. What looked like a massive expected score over-performance was actually just the result of the Crows generating incredibly high-quality shots for goal (here’s their shotmap). This wasn’t luck. It was skill.
It’s of course important to say that this was a very close game. Adelaide looked likely to lose when they were 16 points down with less than nine minutes to play. And, as encouraging as it would have been for supporters, I probably wouldn’t have written 3,000 words about yet another gallant defeat to a top side, especially one that consigned the Crows to 0-5.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that Adelaide’s ball use on Saturday was reminiscent of their highest peaks from 2023. But there are key differences which are worth expanding upon. For one, this was a win delivered by younger and less-experienced players who flourished when given the opportunity. There have been some pointed questions asked about just how much of the heavy lifting Adelaide’s young players have been doing since the club committed to its rebuild. Saturday ought to have dispelled some doubts. For the first time in his career, Jake Soligo attended the most centre bounces of any Adelaide midfielder. No player on the ground had more contested possessions. Izak Rankine attended 20 centre bounces, almost as many as he’d been given for the entire season to that point, and was arguably best on ground. Rachele was an important link in several chains that led to scores. Mitch Hinge was the best defensive player on the ground and a key architect of many of Adelaide’s successful back-half chains. Sam Berry dominated the final quarter after coming as a sub and kicked the match-winner. It was the veterans who made way. Laird attended less than half of centre bounces for the first time since Round 9, 2020 – his first-ever game as a midfielder. The skipper, meanwhile, was kept to just 12 disposals, his lowest count since joining the club. The fact that such a significant win was achieved without major contributions from the men who’ve won the last three club champion awards should excite supporters.
The other reason why Saturday’s win was very different to anything the Crows achieved in 2023 is that introducing more dynamic players into the midfield rotations makes the side significantly less predictable. Players like Rankine, Rachele and Luke Pedlar are, at least at this stage of their careers, predominantly forwards who can spend some time in the middle. That creates a set of trade-offs. They might be less defensively accountable, for one. But it also creates beneficial post-clearance mismatches. As a coach, you should always be looking to maximise Izak Rankine’s influence on the game. Keeping him in the forward line restricts his impact. By putting him around the ball, you not only harness his top-notch agility and disposal, you’re also pitting him against a midfielder who won’t be comfortable following him into Adelaide’s attacking 50. Similarly, Rachele’s goal-kicking instincts will always make him a tough match-up inside 50. Forcing the opposition to switch players creates further opportunities.
Crows fans are certainly entitled to ask where this kind of football has been all season. It’s certainly frustrating to know that your side is capable of playing this yet not seeing any evidence of it for a month. I think the simplest explanation is probably the truest: Matthew Nicks wanted to believe that Plan A would yield the kinds of results it did in the back half of 2023, and it took some time to produce a viable Plan B. Then there are all the other reasons I listed at the top of the piece: form, injuries, coaching staff changes, etc. And the Crows are still 1-4. Very few teams have made any sort of dent in the competition from this position. But, both in terms of the result, and the process employed to achieve it, this felt like a hugely significant day for a club – and a coach – that’s been heavily criticised so far in 2024.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back in your inboxes on Thursday afternoon with the Round 6 preview.
Really thought-provoking analysis. I like the focus on team structure and tactics rather than individual performances.