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Surely no rivalry in Australian sport delivers as spectacularly, and as regularly, as the Showdown.
Every year without fail, Adelaide and Port Adelaide lock horns at a sold out Adelaide Oval and put on the spectacle of the round, with highlights aplenty, scintillating football, buckets of goals, and more often than not a thrilling finish.
Steven Motlop’s flashpoint. Jordan Dawson’s swinger after the siren. Chad Wingard clinching the mother of all comebacks. The Crows doing it for Phil Walsh. Josh Jenkins with the poster that wasn’t.
We didn’t get the thrilling finish this time, the margin blowing out to 31 points as the Crows piled on the last five goals. When the whips were cracking in the final 15 minutes, only one side had enough left in the tank to blow apart a game that had hardly had a double-figure margin before then. But it didn’t matter. This game had already delivered more than enough – the Showdown always does.
It’s farcical to consider that, at a time when TV executives and networks across the country are crying out for more goals and more eyeballs, this most captivating of clashes is still getting shunted to the Saturday death slot, either doing the twilight shift or as the second night match handed the Fox Footy-exclusive treatment.
The atmosphere that emanates out of Adelaide Oval at every key moment, every goal, every titanic defensive effort, is palpable even hundreds of kilometres away, watching on a screen.
It’s a crying shame the powers that be – and that includes the AFL – never give it the respect it deserves.
Not that Adelaide fans will care, of course. It might not be their best win under Matthew Nicks – knocking over Melbourne in mid-2021 still takes the cake in that aspect – but it’s surely the sweetest.
After two weeks of frustration, flashes of brilliance sandwiched in between far too much ugliness, this was a serious performance from a team that, bit by bit, is putting something of merit together.
Port Adelaide aren’t world-beaters, of course – their midfield copped a hammering in the final quarter, while their forward line simply doesn’t apply enough pressure for AFL level – but no game is more significant on the South Australian calendar than the Showdown, and to storm home in the manner they did on the biggest stage outside September will build up a tremendous amount of belief.
The Crows played four quarters like their third term against Richmond last week – daring with ball in hand, especially bouncing off half-back following an intercept, relentless in close, handing the Power a 146-124 contested possession thumping, and getting more than enough supply to a forward line that will give any defence in the AFL sleepless nights.
For the Crows to kick 18 goals, six straight coming in a final term for the ages, despite a goalless evening from Taylor Walker is another sizeable positive. The veteran’s presence is still profound, and he regularly draws attention from the best defender, but he doesn’t need to kick four or five anymore for the Crows to be in with a chance. They have other options.
Nearly a decade ago, Wingard broke into the mainstream with five goals in a Power Showdown win; here’s hoping the same will go for Riley Thilthorpe.
In and out of the side through the last two years, his was a game of moments rather than pure dominance. He only took three marks, low for a key forward – but all led to a goal via a nerveless set shot. Of his seven kicks, five sailed through the big sticks.
And that’s not even counting the times he brought the ball to ground, preventing the Port defenders from ruling the skies – the Power took just one intercept mark in the entire second half.
And when you bring it to ground, you bring Izak Rankine into play.
The Crows are slowly building a game plan around this guy – where previously they’ve been dour, contested ball scrappers stodgy by foot and seldom prepared to risk a turnover with their ball movement, now they take the corridor on, surge aggressively, and try and get the ball inside 50 as quickly as they can.
If Thilthorpe, or Walker, or the rangy Lachie Gollant, can mark, then brilliant. If not, watch out for Rankine and Josh Rachele. Or if not them, Luke Pedlar will bob up, or perhaps Lachie Murphy (who, incidentally, played surely the game of his career on Saturday night).
2021-era Matthew Nicks would never have done something as unorthodox as play Jordan Dawson, his safest user, on the ball for the whole night. It left plenty to do defensively for the likes of Max Michalanney, Brodie Smith and especially Mitch Hinge, but the message to the midfield was clear. When you win the ball, be direct and be sharp.
Did it work? Offensively, yes, defensively no – at least to start. By quarter time, for 24 inside 50s combined, 11 goals had been kicked.
Dawson was having a sizeable influence in midfield, driving the ball inside 50 four times along with seven disposals and a goal, but without his intercepting ability behind the ball, the Crows struggled to prevent Port doing the exact same thing.
There were unlucky moments – Lachie Sholl caught holding the ball when Sam Powell-Pepper should have conceded a 50m penalty for tackling him while behind the mark, for one – but with Port on fire from the clearances with a 13-9 advantage – and with three of their first eight goals from that source – and Powell-Pepper running riot in attack, the Crows were vulnerable.
The lack of pressure was telling on both sides, as much for the goalkicking accuracy as the tackle or disposal efficiency numbers. Port and the Crows went to half time on 9.3 apiece, and for the Power especially, there was hardly a difficult shot to speak of, with the majority of majors coming through the corridor, directly in front.
Both sides went in knowing the opposition’s primary weakness was in defence, particularly among the talls, and sought to take advantage of it.
Josh Rachele of the Crows celebrates a goal. (Photo by James Elsby/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The Power were especially keen on this – in the first two rounds, their kick-handball ratio had been 1.37:1 while ranking sixth for marks with 99.5 per game. Especially against the Lions, it was a game of high disposal, using options wide with marks and handballing to get through pressure, and drowning Brisbane through sheer weight of numbers.
By half time against the Crows, Port had just 31 marks, with a kick-handball ratio of 1.84. With 27 clearances, including 11-5 out of the centre (Ollie Wines with four the biggest contributor), Port got the ball and looked to get it in towards Charlie Dixon and Todd Marshall at all costs.
Dixon especially benefitted, looking monstrous in attack with four marks and a free kick, plus two goals. His sheer size and strength made it an impossible ask for an undersized Crows defence to contain him.
With eight of their clearances to the half, Rory Laird was just about the only Crow holding his weight at the coalface. Dawson had slowed after a stirring start, with Willem Drew spending plenty of time curbing his influence away from stoppages, while Sam Berry hasn’t kicked on yet from a breakout 2022.
By the third term, though, the Crows had found a way to break even, Laird remaining industrious as ever in the bottom of packs and the zip of Rachele adding some extra pace and pressure on the spread. With Murphy working hard and effectively into space to provide outlet kicks, the Crows started to look, for the first time all evening, the better team.
In defence, without as many Port entries to neutralise, Adelaide began to look a lot safer behind the ball. Michalanney, crunched right up the sternum by a big Todd Marshall hit to start the second half, returned from a stint off to look every inch a composed senior head in defence.
Never rushed – he went at a remarkable 100 per cent disposal efficiency – an excellent reader of the play overhead and a more than capable stopper already, the father-son recruit is the Crows’ latest exceptional find from the first round of the draft.
In truth, the Crows shot themselves in the foot that quarter – with 19 inside 50s to 10 to a seriously potent forward line, mustering just 2.5 and a mere three-point lead to the final change seemed match-defining. The problem, as it so often is with Adelaide, was the execution of that oh so crucial final kick inside 50; while the Power couldn’t muster an intercept mark for the quarter, there were plenty of spoils as the Power held their rivals at bay.
Then came the last quarter, and a Crows surge that broke the Power at last.
A crucial goal from that man Murphy again started the procession, with the goal the Crows’ eighth from a defensive half possession chain – clearly putting pressure on was an optional extra for the Power forwards.
In attack, the Crows were beginning to win clearances where it mattered, most obviously when Laird broke free to cap off a wonderful match with a deserved goal.
And of course, there was Rankine magic.
This is a forward line that, in a few years’ time, could easily be the envy of the competition. Without the injured Darcy Fogarty, with a subdued Walker, the Power had no answers for their myriad of options. Clamp down on one, and another would bob up somewhere else.
The Crows won the contested possession count by 14 in the final term – once again, the Power were destroyed for the hard ball just as they were last week. It’s a major concern, with Jason Horne-Francis struggling to run out games, Zak Butters only chugging along and Ollie Wines well shaded by Laird.
With only 11 disposals, Travis Boak isn’t getting the midfield minutes he was even last year, as Port give over the centre square to the new wave. That might be well and good for years down the line, but it was surprising how few chances Boak was given on the ball in the final term, when a hardened senior body familiar with pressure situations would have surely come in handy.
That’s what the Crows did in the third term with Rory Sloane, at any rate – injected into the midfield rotation, the former captain’s ferocity and attack on the contest yielded four clearances from limited opportunities.
Todd Marshall was comfortably the worst forward on a night tailor-made from them, but he’s not the major issue. With just one kick for the night, and only one tackle, Junior Rioli was neither a dangerous presence at ground level, nor capable of pressuring with anything like the same intensity as Rankine and Rachele.
For the second week in a row, the Power were split apart by a fast-running, long-kicking, ultra-aggressive opposition. It’s become a blueprint for how to take them to the cleaners.
The Crows are by no means Collingwood – but they might only be one hard-nosed inside midfielder to support Laird away from being a serious finals contender.
They showed it in flashes in the first two rounds, but couldn’t put it together. Of course they were going to maintain it on the biggest stage. If you can’t do it in a Showdown, when can you?
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