Half time at AAMI Stadium on Saturday night and our 20th anniversary game was not running to the 1991 script we all hoped it would. We were down by 19 points and needed to muster a fair bit of improvement to fly over the Hawks in the second half.

While the boys were in the rooms and the crowd were stretching their legs, ground host Andrew Crowell interviewed a young boy at the southern end of the oval. Perked up and leaning over the fence the kid, not looking too concerned at all, summed up the game in the simplest way possible. The interview went a little something like this:

Crowell: “What have the Crows done right in the first half?”
Boy: “Nothing.”
Crowell: “What have the Crows done wrong in the first half?”
Boy: “Everything.”

The 42,000 odd in the stands chuckled. Up until that point it certainly felt like we had done little right and were doing plenty of things wrong.

Sloppy skill errors and indecision made it difficult to break Hawthorn’s zone and the Hawks were making the most of keeping the ball in their forward half of the ground. Then when we did manage to untidily hack our way over the top of the zone the ball would, most of the time, rebound back just as fast into defence.

It was frustrating footy to watch.

An injury to Jason Porplyzia also didn’t help the cause as he warmed the bench and iced a damaged shoulder in the red substitutes’ vest. His night was well and truly over.

But we emerged after the break seemingly a different side and the margin all of a sudden didn’t feel so bad after all.

Broken Hill boy Taylor Walker showed Buddy how it’s done by kicking a ripper from past the 50-metre line and before we knew it the margin was down to 14 points.

Shortly after, the Danger Man woke from his first half slumber finding the ball in the middle of the ground (I like him there Craigy), passing off to Knights, who is sporting the socks down look this season, and he slotted our second on the trot.

Suddenly we were only eight points behind!

The crowd could sense the shift in momentum, finding a voice that I can only imagine was on a similar scale to that of March 1991.

Phil Davis was playing a pivotal role on Buddy Franklin and it was because of one of his strong efforts on the superstar forward that the ball bounced back to our own superstar forward in the making for Walker’s second goal.

We battled goal-to-goal with the Hawks before Walker, again, and Dangerfield, times two, put us in front by three points at the final break.

This was uncharted territory for our so-called third generation Crows. We had fought hard to mount a comeback but I wondered whether we could hang on. Just how were we going to respond?

There was no Goodwin, McLeod, Edwards, Burton or Hentschel. Let alone Ricciuto and Hart who were just a handful of second generation Crows we could have relied on to lead us over the line in the past.

Now it was up to the new guys. The pressure was on!

There was Vince, Douglas and Sloane who gave us first possession of the ball. Walker, Dangerfield, Henderson and Knights all kept the scoreboard ticking over.

Davis was sparkling in defence, McKernan was making his mark and Tambling was showing all the right signs at his new club. Not to mention first gamer Brodie Smith made an impressive debut.

And I could not forget the performance of new skipper Nathan van Berlo. He played like a captain who knew exactly what it meant to wear the tri-colours as Chris McDermott did for the first time as skipper all those years ago.

In the end we soared to a 20-point victory over the Hawks. While the story may not have been quite as sweet as it was in 91’ it was still pretty darn good.