THE AVAILABILITY of key forwards Trent Hentschel and Nick Gill has given Adelaide’s forward line coach, Paul Hamilton, a lot to think about.

Hentschel has a handful of SANFL games under his belt now and appears close to playing his first AFL game since badly injuring his knee in round 21, 2006.

Complicating the issue of when Hentschel will make his much-anticipated return is the enigmatic Gill, who emerged as a cult hero at West Lakes after playing the last seven games of 2007. Gill, like Hentschel, has also only played five or six games this year after suffering a pre-season calf injury but has been named as an emergency for Adelaide twice already.

Hamilton conceded it was unlikely Kurt Tippett, Hentschel and Gill would all play in the same forward line and said versatility would be the deciding factor in which talls would be chosen to further bolster Adelaide’s attack.

“The forward line could be a little bit different in the second half of the year. We need to make sure we’ve got some good lead-up options across the half-forward line; that’s probably been an area where we’ve been a little bit down at different times this year,” Hamilton said.

“So, there is probably an opportunity there for someone and the other important thing for us is getting a nice mix with the bigs, the smalls, the mediums and the guys who can play in various positions both within the forward line and outside of it.

“With that, we’ve also seen that it adds some flexibility to our side. With a guy like Trent, if he can play in defence as well as up forward, then it’s going to help his cause.

“Luke Jericho, who has been given a chance recently, can play on a wing as well as up forward and he gives us the option to rotate guys like Jason Porplyzia, who is terrific up forward, Goody and we also saw Thommo kick six the other day.

“We’ve got a lot of guys who can do it and we’d like to have that flexibility. If things are working, we’d like to be able to change it round.

“Guys like Trent, Nick, James Sellar and Ken McGregor have got to show they can be flexible in the positions they can play if they want to get a game.”

“It’s a nice situation to be in. Certainly at the start of the year we were looking at our forwards and thinking who is going to play up there? Who are going to be our forwards?” Hamilton said.

In the opening 12 rounds, Adelaide had little choice but to adopt a predominantly small forward line, similar to that of the Western Bulldogs, with the exception of first year tall Tippett, who found his niche at full forward.

The versatile Brett Burton patrolled across half-forward; Richard Douglas emerged as a crumber and Simon Goodwin, Jason Porplyzia, Scott Thompson, Luke Jericho, Tyson Edwards and Andrew McLeod all filled cameo roles in attack.

The Crows lifted their scoring average to 100 points per game (14 points up on 2007) and registered a score with 60 per cent of their forward entries; an efficiency rate shared with top four sides Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs.

“We’ve probably gone a little bit smaller more than anything this season. It wasn’t our firm decision to go that way, but it’s been the way we’ve had to go with the players we’ve had available.

“We were a fairly inefficient forward line last season, ranked 16th in the league for forward efficiency, so we knew we had to find some improvement.

“The ways to do that were through our ball movement patterns, which we think we have improved somewhat, and also our forward system and personnel down there.

“It’s still, definitely, a work in motion and we’ll wait and see as to who stands up and takes their chances.”