I can imagine the conversation easily.
‘Haven’t you seen our forward line?’ I would say with a touch of arrogance.
‘Tippett will kick 50 plus, Walker is just waiting to burst out of the blocks, Knights will ram them home from all angles, Porplyzia will kick gun barrel straight and Burton will be back to his best after a full pre season’.
Yet so far this season we’ve only managed a pitiful 31 goals in four outings and Patrick Dangerfield, who’s best position is in the midfield, is our leading goal kicker with six to his name. Richmond, who languishes on the bottom of the ladder, has even kicked more goals than us scoring a total of 34 for the season.
At the moment one of the most potent forward lines Crows supporters have seen (they certainly found the gap in between the big sticks plenty of times last year) is failing. I lost count of how many times on Saturday afternoon against the Blues that the ball was turned over in the midfield due to a lack of options further up the ground.
One particular moment that resinates in my mind was Walker streaming out of defence in the second quarter, looking up, seeing nothing to kick to and then just banging the ball forward aiming for the boundary line. The ball trickled over the paint and the umpire correctly called deliberate.
Ideally in that situation I’d like to see a defender passing up the field to a leading Walker streaming out from the goal square. Sounds simple doesn’t it? And having seen him perfect the role in the SANFL it’s frustrating to watch him have little to no bearing on games. But he’s not the only one who has disappointed after a month of footy.
If an empty forward line wasn’t discouraging enough the Crows inability to stick tackles has long haunted us this season. While we only trailed by ten tackles on Saturday, 57 to Carlton’s 67, on average against the other AFL teams we rank an embarrassing 16th.
I found myself no less than two minutes into the game yelling out, ‘Tackle!!’ as Graham Johncock slipped an easy tackle on the Blues’ Chris Yarran who went on to effortlessly nailed their first. We seem to either miss the opposition player completely or only grab hold of their waists leaving their arms free to handball off.
To me this is a basic-core football skill. That being said don’t even get me started on our errant goal kicking.
But if there were anything positive to take out of our 48-point whipping from Carlton it would have to be Phil Davis’ debut. The 19 year-old from North Adelaide has often impressed me in defence down at Prospect Oval. Perhaps his greatest assets are his poise and ability to read the play. I certainly hope we see more of him in coming weeks.
This Friday night we face the Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium. I’m sure that those of us that have continually tipped the Crows, like me continually going on a hunch of hope, will almost certainly favour the opposition.
The game poses a testing challenge as its fair to say we haven’t seen a lot of improvement since day dot against the Dockers and I doubt we can turn everything around in the space of a week.
I’ve been waiting for something to ‘click’ in the side, expecting it really; surely we’re not that bad. But for now it looks like I’ll be waiting a little bit longer.
