The Adelaide Crows have comprehensively won the 43rd Showdown in wet conditions at the Adelaide Oval winning by 84 points, a record high margin in the history of this contest.
It was complete domination by the top of the ladder Crows.
Adelaide wrested control of the contested possession in the opening minutes. They peppered the goals early only to squander repeated opportunities, and in fact it was the Power who booted the first major of the game through Justin Westhoff.
The Crows were well on top around the ground but managed just the one goal to quarter time, while they kicked nine behinds in the same period and other shots failed to score.
In the second term the ladder leaders began to turn their advantage in general play into a sizable lead, as Port Adelaide simply couldn’t get their hands on the ball.
In the wet weather, the Crows went lower and harder at the contest. Sloane and the Crouch brothers were fierce in contested situations, while Sam Jacobs had the better of the ruck battle.
The Power were barely a factor in the first half. You could blame the conditions, or a lack of application, or maybe the nailbiting win last week took it out of them, but whatever the cause they were listless, tentative and uninspiring all evening.
Even though the Crows continued to be wasteful in front of goal, they went into half time with a six goal lead, as weight of possession and territory eventually told.
The scoreboard told one story at the main break, but the other stats told a rather more dramatic one.
The Crows had 93 more disposals, 16 more scoring shots, and had an extraordinary lead in the inside 50s – 43 to 11 in a full half of football.
When Betts and Jacobs kicked the first two goals of the third term to open up a 57 to 9 lead, it was clear there wasn’t going to be a dramatic shift in the back end of this game.
With the game gone the Power began to find a little more fight, putting some more meat on that thin scoreline with three goals for the quarter, but Adelaide had five of their own to further extend the lead.
As we ran out time on the game it unsurprisingly didn’t improve much as a contest. The Crows still seemed to be the hungrier of the two teams, and by the end pushed the margin up to that record level of 84 points.
Sam Jacobs was awarded the Showdown Medal – his third – and his superiority over Patrick Ryder in this game might well influence All Australian selection in a few weeks.
These two sides have the best percentage of any of this year’s teams, so the size of the margin today is unlikely to mean much in the final analysis.
But the ramifications of the result are significant.
The Crows are a win and a draw clear of second spot with three games to play, and are now close to certainties to host in the first week of the finals.
Given their form at Adelaide Oval lately – particularly today – they very much have the inside running on their first grand final berth since 1998.
Port Adelaide now lose touch with the top four, but they remain a game and percentage inside the top 8. Their draw from here looks fairly kind, so they’d be confident of playing finals still, but obviously they’d want to finish the season more strongly than what they showed in tonight’s encounter.
And you really have to wonder what impact this might have on the confidence of the Power players. This was arguably the biggest occasion of the season so far for this team, and yet at times they just seemed to have no appetite for the contest, certainly compared to their opponents.
Ken Hinkley has a lot of work to do to pick his side up from this performance.
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Now that was a quick change of mind!
