Adelaide Crows onballer Richard Douglas being pursued by Carlton's Chris Yarran. Picture: Sarah Reed. Source: The Advertiser
THE Crows are in danger of being labelled one-trick ponies.
Damning Champion Data statistics show that if they don't dominate contested possession they are sitting ducks.
The reason? They simply don't apply enough pressure to the opposition when they don't have the ball.
Adelaide ranked an awful 16th in tackles last season, averaging 58.3 per game.
It averaged 6.5 tackles a game fewer than its opponents - ranked 17th in the league. But it was able to overcome the numbers purely because it was so good at hunting the football.
Last year the Crows averaged 11.6 more contested possessions than their opponents - ranked a clear No. 1.
But their capitulation in the opening round, 35-point defeat to Essendon was clear evidence of their vulnerability when they don't get hold of the ball first.
When Adelaide jumped out of the blocks to lead 3.4 to 0.0 18 minutes into the match, it led contested footy by 13.
It was so dominant in the first 13 minutes that its contested possession advantage was plus-15. Such an early disparity is virtually unheard of in the AFL.
But the game quickly turned. From the moment Michael Hurley kicked Essendon's first score - a behind - the Dons not only matched the Crows for contested ball but beat them.
They outpointed them by five for the rest of the game to reduce the contested possession margin to 10 in Adelaide's favour.
Just as significantly, Essendon laid 27 more tackles (74-47) than the Crows and from the 18-minute mark of the opening term to the final siren, the Bombers out-tackled Brenton Sanderson's outfit 62-37.
This resulted in an uncontested possession advantage of 162-126 to Essendon. Let a team have that much easy ball and it's almost impossible to beat it.
The bottom line is that while Adelaide knows how to hunt the footy, it doesn't know how to hunt the man when it loses control of the oval-shaped ball.
Its tackling was disgraceful against the Dons, with those in red and black breaking free with ridiculous ease.
Fifteen Crows players failed to lay more than two tackles.
Defenders Andy Otten and Daniel Talia did not record one tackle while Jason Porplyzia, Bernie Vince, captain Nathan van Berlo, Taylor Walker, Ricky Henderson, Matthew Jaensch, Josh Jenkins, Sam Jacobs, Brodie Martin and Ben Rutten had only one each.
Rory Sloane and Jared Petrenko (six tackles) and Matthew Wright (five) were among those Crows who could not be accused of not getting down and dirty.
So do the Adelaide players have an attitude or technique problem when it comes to tackling.
Douglas thinks it's the latter.
"We can tackle, we just didn't do it well," Douglas said this week as Adelaide made sticking tackles a strong focus at training.
"You've got to get lower ... teams are very good now at dropping their hips and slipping the tackles.
"There's time last year where we tackled poorly and times when we tackled really well, so you can turn it around.
"So we'll probably get the gloves off a bit and do a bit of tackling work."
The Crows' season could depend on it. Last year when teams won both the contested footy and tackle count they won a remarkable 81 per cent of the time.
Adelaide's record when it won both categories last year was unblemished, winning all five encounters, highlighting how important the stats are.
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