It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon for footy in Adelaide. The late August sun was shining and a bumper crowd had made their way to AAMI Stadium for the last time this season.
There was a good spirit amongst the patrons in the terrace with many expecting a cracking contest between two reasonably matched teams. And that’s exactly what we were served up in the first quarter.
The term time neared 35 minutes as a whopping 12 goals were scored. We nabbed seven majors with a spread of goal kickers. Petrenko, Gunston, Vince, van Berlo, Tippett were the contributors thanks to some quick delivery into the forward line.
It was certainly fast, effective and spectator friendly football. The ball was moved at lightening speed down the ground often resulting in the Tigers being caught on the back foot and unable to match it with our talented youngsters.
The even contest was living up to expectations early on but turned an unexpected corner in the second quarter. Our first term frequent goal scoring diminished as Richmond tightened up their defence and made it more challenging for us to score.
Thankfully, for our sake, a range of Richmond shots on goals were wayward as we could only further our quarter time lead to 16 points at half time.
While we may have hit a speed bump I wasn’t expecting us to be derailed quite so easily after the half time break. Richmond is no competition to be sneezed at but I was disappointed in our showing after we virtually matched it with the competition leaders, Geelong, not that long ago.
The Tigers outscored us in the second half 11 goals to six and stitched up a morale-boosting win nearing the end of the season.
Just one look at the stats sheet post game and it’s clear where we went wrong. We trailed our opposition in contested possessions by 13 and recorded nine more clangers. These numbers paint the picture of our decline in performance that was mostly error riddled and lacked that toughness we’ve come to love in recent times.
Our inability to win the momentum back off Richmond, particularly in the third term, I think, was partly the result of a testing run towards the tail end of the season that included some close battles and two trips to Queensland.
However there are some positives to be drawn from the defeat.
Firstly, Jack Gunston continued his late year surge of form. The strong marking forward booted a bag of five goals bringing his tally, since Mark Bickley stepped into the senior coaching role, to 12 goals.
I’ll admit I was beginning to have my doubts about ‘Norman’ but he’s certainly fired of late and looks to be a perfect fit alongside of Kurt Tippett and Taylor Walker in the forward 50.
Another player who has turned his season around is the skipper himself, Nathan van Berlo. He’s averaged a solid 30 possessions in the previous five weeks and I’m sure we’re all enjoying seeing him slot a few goals again.
This weekend we embark on a round 24 clash against the Eagles in Perth. It will be our last hurrah for 2011 so let’s finish our footy year on a high.
