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For a quarter and 19 minutes on Thursday night, the Adelaide Oval was dazzled by the most exhilarating footy we’ve seen all year.
Adelaide, already the highest-scoring side in the competition, was putting on a masterclass to take apart an undermanned Geelong defence with a brutal onslaught of aggressive, damaging ball movement through the corridor, and repeat entries to give the most dynamic forward line in the game silver service.
Five consecutive goals to start the game from turnovers. Taylor Walker winding back the years with a stunning left-foot snap at full pace to open the night. Darcy Fogarty nailing goals from all angles, four goals for the second term giving him bragging rights in that trio of talls that must give opposing defences nightmares. Ben Keays playing his role of link man to perfection in every single facet, dashing up the ground to lay brutal tackles and drive the footy inside 50, then popping up close to goal to nail three majors in a quarter and a half.
With a 30-point lead and a home crowd baying for blood, this looked every inch the statement win over a proper contender the Crows have been yearning for to give their barnstorming start to the year the legitimacy that last week’s controversial, thrilling loss to Gold Coast couldn’t.
Which of course begs the question: how on earth did they lose?
To pull this team, dazzling as they were, down to size required one of two things: either completely stifling their ball movement and shutting down their forwards to eke out a winning total in fits and starts, or to put pedal to the metal and surge past them with a burst of scoring as emphatic – only much more surprising – as anything the Crows had mustered.
The Cats chose the second route. With no Tom Stewart, or Jack Henry, or Jake Kolodjashnij to keep those forwards in check, with Mark Blicavs forced into defence through sheer necessity, they had no other choice.
But for them to pull it off all the same makes this both the best win any side has had in 2025 so far, and confirms that as powerful as the Crows are, their weapons can be used against them by a team bold enough, smart enough and good enough.
In the first quarter and a half, Geelong scarcely had a second to breathe. Shut down from all angles by a merciless wave of Adelaide pressure, hemming them in and forcing long bombs up the line or indiscrimiate handballs out of a sea of blue, red and yellow, this was as far removed from the mark-fest they enjoyed against Melbourne as it’s possible to get.
Take this turnover at half-back: Ollie Dempsey would have had the time, space and option to hit this 20 metre chip pass to relieve pressure against Melbourne. Not against these Crows.
Just 37 marks to half time was the Crows’ reward, with the Cats forced into a ploy that was, for many years, their weakness: scoring from stoppages.
The Cats, though, had an ace up their sleeve: off a five-day break, and losing to the Suns in stifling Gold Coast conditions last week, Adelaide surely couldn’t keep up this frenetic pressure for long. Keep ramming that door long enough, and something will give.
And give it did – along the way exposing the Crows’ weakness behind the ball remains just as vulnerable as it was in 2023, and explaining why they NEED to play as all-guns-blazing as they do.
Particularly vulnerable from centre bounces, where the Crows’ backs’ individual weaknesses can’t be covered by stacking numbers behind the ball, the Cats piled on five goals from that source by three-quarter time to keep themselves in the match.
There’s no time in the above Max Holmes goal to start the second half to drop a spare behind the ball, nor deploy a sweeper: every single Crows back has obediently followed their Cats opponent rather than, as the game’s best defenders are wont to do, sagging off to occupy dangerous space.
This means it’s left to Josh Worrell to both stop Patrick Dangerfield marking the ball AND prevent the footy from bypassing both of them. He, of course, can’t do both.
But the Crows’ weaknesses aren’t just in personnel, they’re also in structure. Matthew Nicks has his team so destructive at scoring on the counterattack, especially from their defensive 50, that they can be sucked up to the ball if you resist the temptation to blaze away.
Take this Cats goal, for instance:
Bailey Smith consciously chooses to try and weave inboard through the traffic rather than bombing long; with Gryan Miers riding shotgun, it’s a sound move backed up by the Cats’ knowledge that that is how they need to play it.
It’s Miers that delivers inside 50, and in the two seconds it takes him to decide on where he’s going to kick, the Crows have begun to edge up and away from the hot spot: note as the camera pans out that seven Crows are between 40 and 50 metres out from goal, with a great big whopping hole right where the ball is about to go, and Brad Close unmarked in the middle of it.
All Ollie Dempsey needs to do is force a draw in the air with Isaac Cumming, and it’s a two on one at ground level that Close makes the most of.
In midfield, the pace and explosive strength out of stoppages of Max Holmes and Bailey Smith was perfectly suited to the task of gaining territory by foot and putting Adelaide’s backline under the pump as quickly as possible. Holmes finished the night with 805 metres gained from his 32 disposals, Smith 643 from 35, with a combined 11 clearances. The Crows simply had no one quick enough to go with them (Izak Rankine, naturally, is only required to run TOWARDS goal with that kind of speed).
Smith in particular could not have been more suited to a game like this. Against a backline where the long, high bombs that earned him the ire of many a Dogs fan were a fine way to go about it, with an opposition likely to run out of legs the longer the game went, with a directive to run first and ask questions later, little wonder he was arguably best afield.
Having taken over the territory game and forced the Crows onto the back foot, Adelaide found themselves, for virtually the entire last quarter, trying to bite off risky plays down the corridor to turn things around. All with considerable fatigue against a much more well-rested rival with the momentum at their back.
It was a recipe for mistakes, and mistakes there were. A whole lot of them.
It’s a remarkable testament to both Chris Scott’s coaching, and the side he coaches, that there are, pardon the pun, so many ways for them to skin a cat.
Against the Dees, it was uncontested marking, patient ball use, and finding uncontested marks inside 50. But for the Crows, with limited personnel and a more fearsome attacking opponent, the template changed completely – take the game on through the corridor, gain as much territory as possible, and put a vulnerable backline under the pump.
It’s in personnel, too – who else would have the luxury of playing Mark Blicavs and Sam De Koning as your ruck duo for much of the season, then amid a spate of injuries down back simply shift them down there to be important key defenders? And then in their stead on-ball, send in a 35-year old former Brownlow Medallist in Patrick Dangerfield who’d spent the bulk of his time forward in the early rounds, and yet was capable of impacting anywhere he went on the ground?
The Crows, right now, are the only team to have twice played in a match where both sides have scored 100 points. In their losses to the Suns and now the Cats, they have scored 90 and 100 points respectively – that’s two of the top five highest-scoring losing scores of the season to date (and one of those other losses came AGAINST the Crows).
It’s one thing to be capable of scoring to the degree the Crows are in the modern game: but to actively NEED to be so prolific is a significant issue.
It didn’t haunt the Crows against Essendon earlier this year because the Bombers’ defence is an even bigger shambles than theirs is.
But against a smart, assured and brilliant team like the Cats, and many other teams they’ll need to play and beat if they’re serious about competing in 2025, Nicks and Adelaide are going to need to find something to patch themselves up down back.
And with GWS and Fremantle in their next fortnight, they’ll need to do it fast.
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