This season, so far, has not been good. We started off on a high with a win over the Hawks thinking we were destined for great things. Since then we’ve turned out to be anything but and have shown little improvement at all this year.
We’re arguably the most inconsistent side in the competition. Below I’ve identified the three types of Crows we’ve seen this year.
First of all there is the side that will scrape together a win after playing two or three quarters of respectable footy. They’re tolerable but rarely sighted.
Then we have the Crows who will lift against the competition’s top ranked teams but will eventually get overrun. This bunch is deceiving as they make us momentarily forget our deficiencies and leave us feeling somewhat satisfied as they’ve given it a decent go.
Finally, and the most disappointing of all, the side who gets convincingly beaten by the likes of Port Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane. The side that makes us say not very nice things and forces us to use all our will to not march out the stadium early.
As supporters we’ve had to watch the last group three times in just nine matches. That’s a whopping 33.33 percent of the season!
I shudder at the thought of sitting through another performance like the one we witnessed on the weekend. But going by the frequency of these sort of matches this year we will surely witness another.
Our game against the Lions began to unravel only moments into the second quarter. Luke Thompson hanballed backwards in the Brisbane’s forward pocket to Michael Doughty who slipped over, allowing the easiest of easy goals to Ash McGrath.
As they say in the classics, that summed up our day.
Before we move the ball forward out of defence we have a strange tendency to shift it dangerously close to our opponent’s goal. It’s extremely risky and even more so when you don’t have the cattle that can consistently pull it off.
It’s almost as if we’re playing chess not football. Nearly every move around the ground is painstakingly thought over for too long, even if just a few seconds, before being executed and we will not shy away from going backwards and sideways in order to go forward.
I understand the concept of switching sides of play but when the players aren’t willing to work hard enough to move into space and their skills aren’t up to scratch it’s never going to work.
When this avenue to attack failed against Brisbane, and we elected to bomb the ball long, not only could we not take a contested mark but time and time again we failed to at least, at the bare minimum, bring the ball to ground.
This is illustrated in a couple of statistics. We had 10 more inside 50 entries than the Lions yet 12 less marks inside our attacking arch.
We’d bomb it in and it would come straight back out. Rinse and repeat.
This is all basic stuff yet we’re doing it so, so poorly.
We see this sort of lack of simple football nous every single week no matter which side decides to show up. Where have we improved this year? I thought we were supposed to be learning from our mistakes?
All I can say is thank god for Scott Thompson. Perhaps our only player who is having an all round good season and would surely be leading our Club Champion Award. If it weren’t for him I fear how out performed, that’s putting it nicely, our midfield would be.
Great teams have great players who play at their best, or near it, every single week and we are scaringly far off this mark.
