MIDFIELDER Nathan van Berlo says there’s no doubt Adelaide can respond to Friday night’s 68-point belting by Geelong with a win over the unpredictable Pies this week.
Last week’s loss was the club’s third-straight and fifth against a current top-eight side this season, but van Berlo was confident the streak hadn’t dented his team’s confidence.
“We’re still well and truly in the race for the finals, so we’re going to keep moving towards that because the teams we’ve got coming up are going to be big games,” van Berlo said.
“We know we can match it against the best sides. We’ve lost the last three, but the first two of those were very close. They obviously go down as losses, but in saying that, we’re not far off the mark.
“As a playing group we really pride ourselves on responding after a bad loss and we’ve done that all year. It’s part of our culture at the footy club and this week is going to be a huge opportunity to go up against Collingwood, who had a great game against Sydney on the weekend and are obviously in some good form.
“It’s going to be a big ask to respond this week, but the players are very confident we can get that result.”
The Crows have not lost four games-in-a-row since rounds one-four in 2004, several months before Neil Craig replaced Gary Ayres as senior coach.
Adelaide was resilient in sticking to its pre-determined game plan on Friday night, opting to try and attack the awesome Cats rather than simply shutting them down.
The result was the club’s worst loss of the season, but van Berlo said the players had full-faith in each other and the game plan.
“Self-doubt creeps in when your culture isn’t strong enough to keep it out. We’re very lucky that the players feel like our culture is that strong that we can keep backing ourselves and feel confident with the game plan we’ve got,” he said.
“We see, when were playing well, how well the game plan works and what it does to opposition teams. We just have to be more consistent in executing it and be prepared to play it for four quarters.
“The self-confidence certainly isn’t wavering in the group at the moment. We know we’ve fallen short of what we’ve wanted over the last couple of weeks, but we’ll keep pushing on from here.”
