- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Whether deliberate or coincidental, the AFL has gifted us the perfect possible start to the six-week sprint to the finals. Tonight’s winner goes top, and takes out a top two rival. What more could you want?
It’s only six weeks since the Cats hosted the Crows, the vagaries of the 17 opponents into 22 games fixture bringing us the return trip early. Adelaide are yet to play Collingwood, Sydney or West Coast, while Geelong are yet to play Carlton, Sydney and Richmond.
That influences some of the underlying metrics for these teams, but not significantly as we’ve now got 16 games of information.
The back end of the season has snuck up on us all; we’re like primary school kids on a long summer holiday to a coastal town. While all wins are wins – four points in August are worth the same as they are in April – there are fewer opportunities for teams to directly influence their place in the hierarchy.
We ran through the run home in all its glory on Wednesday, noting that it begins with a bang this evening. So it does. Adelaide, in first place on 12 wins, host Geelong, in second place on 11.5 wins.
To the winner go the spoils: Adelaide open up a 1.5-game gap with five games remaining; Geelong drawing level in the loss column and improving their chances of making Adelaide’s percentage advantage redundant.
It may be the biggest game of the year so far in terms of pre-match expectations and hype surrounding the outcome. Unfortunately, it may be missing two of its biggest stars.
Patrick Dangerfield and Rory Sloane were both injured in their last outings, the former hurting his foot and the latter sustaining what loomed as a nasty concussion. As it stands, both have been cleared to play; Dangerfield travelled to Adelaide ahead of his teammates in an effort to recover on the ground (and presumably to catch up with some friends).
(Photo: AAP)
Earlier in the week, Geelong coach Chris Scott conveyed Dangerfield was a 40 per cent chance to play – the Cats have since said he will be given right up until 90 minutes before the game to prove his fitness. Sloane reportedly thought the umpire telling him to leave the ground was Bernie Vince – Joel Selwood set a precedent by being pulled out of a game at the last minute as a result of failing the concussion protocol on game day.
It would be amazing if both played. Both teams have flexibility in their forward and back lines to shift the deck if either Dangerfield or Sloane are pulled late and one of the young players on their emergency list comes in.
By way of actual team changes, the Crows lose Jake Lever to a tight hamstring, and bring in former South Australian cricketer Alex Keath from their Category B rookie list. That makes two football converts the Crows have unveiled this year, with former basketballer Hugh Greenwood to start next to Keath on the bench.
Geelong have made two changes, with Scott Selwood (you ready, Rory?) and Tom Stewart coming in for Brandan Parfitt and Sam Simpson – the former with a hamstring injury of his own.
Last time they met, Geelong closed down Adelaide’s space on the long Kardinia Park deck, and racked up an extra 88 uncontested possessions.
(Geelong have a season long uncontested possession differential of +4.5 per game – their entire positive differential is accounted for by this game.) The Cats had an extra 17.9 minutes of possession in the game, the seventh largest figure in the 144 games played in the season to date.
The Crows were actually able to score when they had the ball in hand (their points per minute of possession was 1.86, still five per cent above league average), but as above the ball wasn’t in their hands. If Adelaide can rectify this tonight, it could prove decisive on its own.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
That’s because Adelaide’s forward line matches up really well against Geelong’s taller, slower back line. The Crows have named an extra tall than the Cats have named down back, albeit when Adelaide have this look Tom Lynch tends to play on a wing rather than up forward.
Similarly, the Crows’ back six looks on the tall side, albeit Geelong have named a tall forward line with midfielders filling the small posts. Adelaide’s rebounding defenders could have some fun, particularly if Harry Taylor, Rhys Stanley, Tom Hawkins and Daniel Menzel are all inside the stripe at the same time. We said this last time, of course, and it didn’t matter because of the Cats’ midfield dominance.
The last match-up was so one-sided it’s likely we’ll see some mean regression on that alone. However, the preconditions for Geelong to dominate are there once more. Football is a team sport, but if Sloane ends up missing out, Adelaide’s midfield looks light on grunt and heavy on polish. The plan for the Cats is already clear, hit them hard. And without Sloane acting as Adelaide’s force field, the story writes itself.
Adelaide and Geelong will be critical players in the run home, and tonight will help frame how we see the next month and a half. Both teams will be primed, being near full strength and playing with the knowledge that this could be the game that tips them over the top two threshold. It’s going to be incredible.
As to the result, Geelong have owned the last five quite comfortably – pre- and post-Dangerfield – and there’s enough in their last outing to give me comfort that the Crows’ home ground advantage won’t count for much.
It will be tight, but Geelong’s smashmouth stylings will be too much for Adelaide to make up across the ground. The Cats will win this evening, by 18 points.
That’s my Friday night forecast, what’s yours?